STATE OF TENNESSEE v. JAMES WILLIAMS - Articles

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STATE OF TENNESSEE v. JAMES WILLIAMS

Posted by: Tanja Trezise on May 15, 2014

Court: TN Court of Criminal Appeals

Attorneys 1:

Paul K. Guibao (at trial and on appeal) and C. Anne Tipton (at trial), Memphis, Tennessee, for the appellant, James Williams.

Attorneys 2:

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Deshea Dulany Faughn, Assistant Attorney General; Amy P. Weirich, District Attorney General; and Pam Fleming and Reginald Henderson, Assistant District Attorneys General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

Judge(s): GLENN

The defendant, James Williams, was convicted by a Shelby County Criminal Court jury of first degree premeditated murder, three counts of attempted first degree premeditated murder, and employing a firearm during the commission of a dangerous felony. The jury sentenced him to life imprisonment for the first degree murder conviction, and the trial court sentenced him as a Range I offender to twenty-five years for each of the attempted murder convictions and as a Range III offender to fifteen years for the firearm conviction, with each of the sentences to be served consecutively to each other and consecutively to the life sentence. However, at the hearing on the motion for new trial, the trial court overturned and dismissed the firearm conviction, leaving the defendant with an effective sentence of life plus seventyfive years in the Department of Correction for the murder and attempted murder convictions. In a timely appeal to this court, the defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence in support of his murder and attempted murder convictions and argues that the trial court erred in admitting prior bad act evidence and in ordering consecutive sentences. Following our review, we affirm the judgments of the trial court.

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