You’ll find the statute codified at Tenn. Code Ann. §31-1-106.

William James Tines of Knoxville was born in 1923 or 1924. He had no parental guidance. His father was imprisoned at Brushy Mountain in Morgan County, dying in 1937. His mother abandoned him.

So Tines turned to crime at an early age. He resided in reform schools for multiple robberies and thefts. By age 17 he was at Brushy for robbery. He escaped and was quickly caught. In 1944 he was a free man.

I wrote about some of these in my January/February 1990 column and in a June 2006 article. Changes since those publications mandate an update. Here it is.

Admissions by Party-Opponent Tennessee Rule of Evidence 803(1.2)(D) requires an agent’s statement to be against the agent’s interest. Federal Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2)(D) does not. Tennessee also has a category for statements by declarants in privity with the opposing party. Rule 803(1.2)(F).

He was an Ohio lawyer, a Congressman, a Copperhead, an exile, and again a lawyer. As we shall see, he had a brief visit in Tennessee.

Clement Laird Vallandigham (accent on second syllable of surname) was born on July 20, 1820, in Lisbon, Ohio. He studied law under an older brother and was admitted to the bar in 1842. Moving to Dayton, he had a thriving law practice.

Democratic politics put Vallandigham in the legislature and the House of Representatives. He lost his House seat in 1862.

The insanity defense has come a long way since 1843, the year Daniel M’Naghton shot British Prime Minister Robert Peel’s secretary Edward Drummond by mistake. Under the M’Naghton Rule, an accused could escape conviction if a mental disability either prevented the accused from knowing the nature and quality of an act or prevented the accused from knowing the difference between right and wrong.

That was the law of Tennessee until 1977. Then Justice Henry filed Graham v. State, 547 S.W.2d 531, adopting the Model Penal Code test.

The Constitution at Article I, Section 6, gives clients a right to jury trial in civil actions: “The right of trial by jury shall remain inviolate.” Lawyers need to avoid procedural mistakes that jeopardize that right.

Jury Demand

Normally a plaintiff who wants a jury demands it in the complaint, and a defendant wanting a jury demands it in the answer. If either party makes a demand, it cannot be withdrawn without the opponent’s consent. Civil Rule 38.05.

Two fishermen in Carter County at Elizabethton found a body beside the Watauga River on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2004. It was Kristal Gale Dubuque, age 22, the single mother of a son. Recently she had made the mistake of working for bounty hunter Bob Miller. He brutally raped and murdered Kristal during the night of Feb. 15.

At trial during the first full week of May 2007, two young women who were neighbors of Miller testified. Each swore that he made crude statements about desiring sex with Kristal Dubuque. Were these statements admissible evidence?

Black’s Ninth Edition (2009) contrasts these classes of evidence. Direct evidence is “based on personal knowledge or observation … that, if true, proves a fact without inference or presumption.” Circumstantial evidence is “based on inference and not on personal knowledge or observation.” Eyewitness testimony describing commission of a crime is direct evidence. The alleged perpetrator’s flight from a crime scene is circumstantial evidence.

Usually a motion to dismiss under Rule of Civil Procedure 12.02(6) doesn’t scare a plaintiff’s lawyer. Surely the complaint states a claim upon which relief can be granted. But for claims filed on or after July 1, such a motion should rivet attention. Public Chapter 1046 amends Tenn. Code Ann. §20-12-119 with a lengthy subsection (c) that allows a successful defendant to collect far more than traditional court costs, the subject of subsections (a) and (b).

By Sharon Davies | Oxford University Press | $27.95 | 327 pages | 2010

In Birmingham on Aug. 11, 1921, Methodist minister Edwin Stephenson shot Catholic priest James Coyle at the rectory next to the courthouse. The demented reason was that the priest had married Stephenson’s daughter Ruth to a Puerto Rican named Pedro Gussman.