(09/28/1998)
Supreme Court Affirms Death
Penalty for Memphis Murderer
The torture and murder of a Memphis mother in the presence of her children was “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel,” the Tennessee Supreme Court said Monday in a ruling upholding the conviction and death sentence Clarence C. Nesbit received for the 1993 crime.
In a 3-1 decision, the court found that evidence presented during Nesbit’s trial was sufficient to support the death penalty. Writing for the majority, Justice Frank Drowota also rejected Nesbit’s argument that testimony by the victim’s mother concerning the impact of her death on the family should not have been allowed. Chief Justice Riley Anderson and Justice Janice Holder concurred in the decision, which affirmed a Court of Criminal Appeals ruling in the case.
“It is an affront to the civilized members of the human race to say that at sentencing in a capital case, a parade of witnesses may praise the background, character and good deeds of the defendant..., but nothing may be said that bears upon the character of, or the harm imposed, upon the victims,” Drowota wrote.
In his appeal, Nesbit raised numerous issues, which the Supreme Court limited to five. Oral arguments before the court were held March 4 in Dyersburg as part of the Supreme Court’s SCALES project for high school students.
“After hearing oral argument and carefully reviewing the record, we have determined that none of the assignments of error require reversal,” Drowota wrote.
Nesbit, 19 at the time of the crime, shot Miriam Cannon, 20, in the head with a .357 Magnum revolver while four of her five young children were in the apartment where the murder took place. A medical examiner testified that prior to the fatal shooting, the victim had been burned repeatedly and her feet had been bruised and scraped during a form of torture known as “falanga.” He said she would have suffered mental and physical pain and distress during the torture, which was inflicted over an extended period of time.
In a separate dissenting opinion, Justice Adolpho A. Birch, Jr. wrote that he viewed the victim impact evidence “in this case as protracted and, consequently, prone to be unfairly prejudicial.”
“Generally, victim impact evidence is unsettling because its use encourages the jury to quantify the value of the victim’s life and urges the finding that murder is more reprehensible if the victim is survived by a bereaved family than if the victim has no family at all,” he wrote.
In his dissent, Birch wrote that he draws “no conclusion regarding the penalty imposed,” but found that a jury should reconsider the penalty “under the correct sentencing guidelines.”
(9/21/1998)
Tennessee Supreme Court Affirms Three Death Sentences, Reinstates Murder Conviction
The death sentences of two men convicted of killing an elderly couple and a father who sexually assaulted and murdered his 8-year-old daughter were upheld Monday by the Tennessee Supreme Court. The court also reinstated the life sentence handed down for a fatal shooting in Hamilton County.
Derrick Quintero and William Hall were sentenced to death for the 1988 murders of Myrtle and Buford Vester in their Stewart County home. Quintero and Hall, escapees from Kentucky State Penitentiary at Eddyville, entered the Vesters’ home through a window, shot and stabbed the couple and stole their car.
“They obtained the vehicle they needed by murdering the Vesters in their own home, traditionally the place of greatest safety and security,” Justice Frank Drowota wrote in the court’s 3-1 decision.
A majority of the court found that the murder met legal standards for imposition of the death penalty. Chief Justice Riley Anderson and Justice Janice Holder concurred in the decision. In a concurring and dissenting opinion, Justice Adolpho A. Birch, Jr. wrote that he agreed with the “conclusion reached by the majority in this case except with respect to proportionality.” Birch cited a lack of direct evidence that either defendant was the actual killer which “compels my conclusion that the punishment of death is, in this case, disproportionate.”
The court also affirmed the 1994 first degree murder conviction and death sentence of
Gussie Willis Vann, who strangled and raped his young daughter in their McMinn County mobile home.
Writing for a majority of the court, Drowota concluded that the “sentence of death was not imposed in any arbitrary fashion” and that evidence supported the conviction and death sentence. While agreeing with the majority on other issues raised in the appeal, Birch wrote a separate dissenting opinion in which he found that the trial court erred in failing to instruct the jury on a lesser offense, second degree murder. He said in spite of the “sordid nature” of the crime, “constitutional rights must be protected with equal vigor for every defendant...” Special Justice Lyle Reid, now retired from the court, agreed with the dissenting opinion.
Also in a 3-2 decision, the court reinstated the first degree premeditated murder conviction of Willie Williams, Jr. The Court of Criminal Appeals had reversed the conviction, finding that the trial judge erred in failing to instruct the jury on a lesser offense, voluntary manslaughter.
“It is uniquely within the sole province of the jury to determine how much and what parts of the evidence are to be believed and to determine whether the defendant is guilty of any one or none of the offenses,” Birch wrote in his dissent, in which Reid concurred.
Drowota, writing for the majority, said the trial court’s failure to instruct the jury on voluntary manslaughter was “harmless error.” Williams’ conviction and life sentence for the 1993 shooting death of Delaney Thomas were reinstated. Thomas was found dead in his car in a alley behind his mother’s Chattanooga home.