Court: TN Supreme Court
Attorneys:
Herbert H. Slatery III, Attorney General and Reporter; Andrée Sophia Blumstein, Solicitor General; Ronald L. Coleman, Assistant Attorney General; Jody Pickens, District Attorney General; and April Knight and Eric Wood, Assistant District Attorneys General, for the appellant, State of Tennessee.
Brennan M. Wingerter, Assistant Public Defender – Appellate Director, and Jessica F. Butler, Assistant Public Defender, Tennessee Public Defenders Conference; George Morton Googe, District Public Defender; and Jeremy B. Epperson, Assistant Public Defender, for the appellee, Marvin Maurice Deberry.
Judge(s): CAMPBELL
Timing is everything. In this case, at least, that adage holds true. Marvin Maurice Deberry committed a criminal offense and was convicted. But the legislature repealed the statute creating that criminal offense before he was sentenced. Years ago, the legislature enacted a default rule to govern this situation and similar ones. That rule, known as the criminal savings statute, provides generally that an offense must be prosecuted under the law in effect at the time the offense is committed, even if the law is later repealed or amended. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-11-112 (2018). If the later-enacted law “provides for a lesser penalty,” however, the savings statute dictates that “any punishment imposed shall be in accordance with the subsequent act.” Id. At first, the trial court sentenced Deberry under the law in effect at the time of his offense. But Deberry eventually convinced the trial court that the “lesser penalty” exception applied, and the trial court entered an amended judgment retaining Deberry’s conviction but imposing no punishment. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed. We now reverse and reinstate Deberry’s original sentence. We hold that a statute that repeals a criminal offense does not “provide for a lesser penalty” within the meaning of the criminal savings statute. Rather, a person who commits an offense that is later repealed should be convicted and sentenced under the law in effect when the offense was committed unless the legislature provides otherwise.
deberrym_083022.pdf
Courtney Leyes, a partner in the Nashville office of Fisher Phillips, was voted this year’s recipient of the Larry Dean Wilks Leadership Award by fellow members of 2022 TBA 
