STATE OF TENNESSEE v. JEREMY REYNOLDS - Articles

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STATE OF TENNESSEE v. JEREMY REYNOLDS

Posted by: Tanja Trezise on Nov 29, 2021

Court: TN Supreme Court

Attorneys 1: Herbert H. Slatery III, Attorney General and Reporter; Andrée Sophia Blumstein, Solicitor General; Katherine C. Redding, Assistant Attorney General; Neal Pinkston, District Attorney General; Lance W. Pope, Executive Assistant District Attorney General; and Kevin T. Brown, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellant, State of Tennessee.

Attorneys 2: John G. McDougal (at trial and on appeal) and Chris Dixon (at trial), Chattanooga, Tennessee, for the appellee, Jeremy Reynolds.

Attorneys 3: Tyler M. Caviness and Jonathan Harwell, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the amicus curiae, Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Judge(s): BIVINS

Jeremy Reynolds was convicted of premeditated first-degree murder at the conclusion of a jury trial in which the State was permitted to introduce evidence related to gang membership. On appeal, the Court of Criminal Appeals concluded that the evidence of premeditation was legally insufficient and reversed the conviction. The intermediate appellate court noted that the evidence was legally sufficient to support a conviction for the lesser-included offense of second-degree murder, but it nevertheless remanded for a new trial based on its determination that the trial court had abused its discretion in admitting certain pieces of evidence related to gang membership. We accepted the State’s appeal. After a thorough review of the record, we conclude that the evidence was legally sufficient to support the conviction for premeditated first-degree murder. We further conclude that there was no reversible error on the part of the trial court in admitting evidence related to gang membership. Accordingly, we reverse the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals and reinstate Reynolds’s conviction for premeditated first-degree murder.

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