(Sept. 20, 1999)
Supreme Court to Hear Death Penalty Competency Arguments
The Tennessee Supreme Court has agreed to hear arguments in a post-conviction appeal filed by death row inmate Heck Van Tran who claims his execution would be unconstitutional because he is incompetent. Tran was convicted of three murders committed during the 1987 robbery of a Memphis restaurant.
In an order filed Monday, the court said oral arguments will be limited to one issue - whether a post-conviction proceeding is the proper forum for presenting a claim that Tran is not competent to be executed. Tran also has federal court appeals remaining.
In a 1986 ruling, Ford v. Wainwright, the U.S. Supreme Court said the Eighth Amendment to the federal Constitution prohibits the execution of a prisoner who is insane. Although the ruling directed states to provide a procedure for determining the sanity of death-sentenced inmates, Tennessee has no statutory mechanism in place to ensure that the required procedural rights are met.
In his post-conviction petition for relief, Tran claimed he is presently insane. The state Court of Criminal Appeals said in a February opinion that Tran is “unquestionably entitled to be heard in some forum on this issue.”
“Accordingly, we leave this matter to the determination of the Tennessee legislature and/or the Supreme Court of Tennessee,” the Court of Criminal Appeals said.
(Sept. 7, 1999)
Violations of Jury Selection and Sequestration Laws Force New Trial
Violations of state laws spelling out how jury pools must be selected and requiring that jurors in death penalty trials be sequestered have resulted in the Tennessee Supreme Court ordering a new trial for Pat Bondurant, sentenced to death for the 1986 Maury County murder of William Ronnie Gaines.
Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Frank Drowota said a new trial is required because “the statutory procedures governing selection of a special jury venire were totally disregarded and the jury, which was required by law to remain sequestered, was allowed to separate twice daily to drive between their lodgings and the courthouse.” In light of the clear proof of serious errors, the court was “bewildered” by the fact that the prosecution offered no proof to show the errors were harmless.
The error in jury selection occurred when 25 of the 60 potential jurors initially summoned were disqualified only hours after jury selection began. The trial court judge directed the court clerk to summon additional jurors by telephone and instruct them to report to court the next day. This procedure was not one of the three options outlined by law.
In reversing Bondurant’s conviction, the court said “jury selection procedures are intended to protect the integrity of the jury system by providing a uniform and ordered method” of selection and explained that the erroneous procedure “impugned the integrity of the jury system.” The court emphasized that, “in serious and highly publicized capital murder trials, such as this one, meticulous and conscientious adherence to the statutory jury selection procedures is particularly important.”
Although jurors were required to be sequestered at the time of Bondurant’s trial, the jurors were allowed to drive their personal automobiles twice daily from the hotel to the courthouse. The court officer responsible for supervising the jury stated in an affidavit that he had no control over the jurors during this time. Addressing this issue, Drowota wrote, “[g]iven the fact that the General Assembly has mandated sequestration of jurors in capital cases, we take this opportunity to urge trial judges to use all available measures to comply with this legislative mandate.”
The court noted that Bondurant’s trial was highly publicized and reversed the conviction upon finding a great risk “that jurors were influenced by extraneous information or based their decision on facts that were not developed at trial.” The court said, “... if trial courts will fastidiously enforce compliance with the procedural protections designed to eliminate prejudice at its inception, the errors which require reversal in this case will not arise again.”
In another capital case, the court rejected a petition for rehearing filed by death row inmate Donald Wayne Strouth. In June, the court also denied a post-conviction appeal by Strouth, who was sentenced to death for the 1978 murder of Kingsport merchant James Keegan.
Court Provides High-Tech Tool for Legal Research in Murder Cases
Judges, lawyers, legal scholars, the media and others needing information about more than 500 first-degree murder cases in Tennessee can have the data at their fingertips with a new high-tech tool initiated by the state Supreme Court.
A Microsoft™ Windows 95 compatible CD-ROM, produced by the appellate court clerk’s office and the Administrative Office of the Courts, contains reports on cases and defendants dating back to the mid-1970s. The information was taken from Supreme Court Rule 12 reports submitted by trial judges across the state. The rule requires judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys to complete detailed reports in which defendants are convicted of first-degree murder, including those who enter guilty pleas. The 10-page reports include information about the victims, crimes, sentences imposed and the defendants.
The CDS are being provided at no cost to appellate judges, the Public Defenders’ Conference, the District Attorney’s Conference, the Post-Conviction Defender’s Office, the Attorney General’s Office, law school libraries and the state law libraries. Others can purchase copies of the CD for $50 each. Orders should be sent to Joan Goddard, Administrative Office of the Courts, 511 Union Street, Suite 600, Nashville, TN 37243-0607. Semi-annual updates also may be purchased from the AOC.
“The court’s primary interest in the database is for comparative proportionality review in these cases, which is required by court rule and state law,” Chief Justice Riley Anderson said. “The Supreme Court reviews the data to ensure rationality and consistency in the imposition of the death penalty and to identify aberrant sentences during the appeal process.”
The state’s 1977 capital punishment law mandates appellate court review of death penalty cases to determine whether “the sentence of death is excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases, considering both the nature of the crime and the defendant.” In a 1997 Supreme Court opinion, State v. Andre S. Bland, Justice Frank Drowota wrote that comparative proportionality review in death penalty cases is “not a rigid, objective test” and the “sentence of death is not disproportionate unless the case taken as a whole is plainly lacking in circumstances consistent with those in cases where the death penalty has been imposed.”
Tennessee and 19 other states adopted the review requirement in response to a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidating all death penalty statutes. The court held in Furman v. Georgia that the Georgia statute, which was representative of death penalty laws in other states, “wantonly and ... freakishly imposed” death sentences. The ruling compared the imposition of the death penalty under such laws to being struck by lightning.
In response to the decision, the Tennessee General Assembly included a comparative proportionality review requirement in the state’s death penalty statute. Tennessee’s law has “been repeatedly upheld against constitutional attack and, from the raw numbers, appears to be performing its intended purpose of reserving the death sentence for the 'worst of the bad,’” Drowota wrote in Bland.
(07/12/99)
Supreme Court Denies Appeal in Sevier County Death Penalty Case
An appeal by Gary June Caughron, convicted of the 1987 murder of a Sevier County woman, was denied Monday by the Tennessee Supreme Court.
Caughron alleged in a post-conviction petition that his attorney was ineffective during the guilt and sentencing phases of his trial; that the court erred in denying his request for funds to provide certain expert and investigative services; and that there were too few women on the jury. The Sevier County Circuit Court upheld Caughron's conviction, but set aside the death sentence and required a new sentencing proceeding after finding that Caughron was denied his constitutional right to effective counsel during the sentencing phase of the trial. Justices rejected Caughron's claims challenging his conviction in a one-sentence order. The State did not seek to appeal the trial court's ruling that set aside the death sentence.
Caughron, 27, accompanied by 14-year-old April Marie Ward with whom he was romantically involved, entered the home of Ann Robertson Jones and kicked in her bedroom door. The woman was bound, beaten and strangled with cloth strips. Ward testified that she and Caughron also sat on the floor and drank Jones' blood from shot glasses. Ward, the prosecution's key witness, testified that Caughron had been upset with Jones because she made him leave the Pigeon Forge tee shirt shop she operated several weeks before the murder. Ward told authorities Caughron planned the murder and said he intended "to gut" Jones or "slice her throat."
During the sentencing phase of his trial, jurors found that the murder was "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel in that it involved torture or depravity of mind." The jury found that the aggravating circumstance, as defined by Tennessee law, outweighed any mitigating circumstances, and imposed the death penalty. Caughron also received two consecutive 10-year sentences for burglary and assault with intent to commit rape. The Supreme Court had upheld Caughron's conviction and sentence on direct appeal in 1993. At the post-conviction proceeding, however, the trial court found that Caughron had been denied his right to the effective assistance of counsel, a ruling which the State did not seek to appeal to the Supreme Court.
(07/06/1999)
Supreme Court Upholds Middlebrooks Death Sentence
In a decision released Monday, a unanimous Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of Donald Ray Middlebrooks, who was sentenced to death for torturing and murdering a 14 year-old Nashville boy in 1987. The court rejected alleged numerous constitutional violations raised by the defendant.
“We have considered the entire record in this cause and find that the sentence of death was not imposed in any arbitrary fashion and that the evidence supports the jury’s finding that the aggravating circumstance outweighed mitigating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt,” Chief Justice Riley Anderson wrote for the court.
Middlebrooks was sentenced to death twice for the murder of Kerrick Majors. His first sentence was overturned by the Court in 1992 because one of two aggravating factors found by jurors - that the victim was killed in the commission of a felony - duplicated the offense of felony murder and failed to narrow the class of death-eligible defendants as required under the Tennesee Constitution. Jurors had also found that the killing was “especially heinous, atrocious or cruel in that it involved torture or depravity of mind.”
After a second sentencing hearing, Middlebrooks again received a death sentence and appealed. The unanimous Court held that the “heinous, atrocious or cruel” aggravating factor on which jurors based the sentence was constitutional; that the prosecutor’s closing argument did not violate Middlebrooks’ right to due process; and that the sentence of death was not disproportionate.
Middlebrooks, 24 at the time of the crime, his wife, Tammy Middlebrooks, 17, and a friend, Roger Brewington, 16, chased the victim and his friends from a makeshift flea market in Nashville. They grabbed Majors, knocked him down and dragged him into a wooded area. The victim, who was 4'11" tall and weighed 112 pounds, was tortured for several hours. An “X” was carved into his chest, he was force to drink urine, burned, raped with a stick, beaten with brass knuckles, and stabbed to death. In a confession, Middlebrooks said the victim was crying and pleaded that he wanted to “go to school and get an education.” The defendants, who were white, also used racial epithets toward Majors, who was black.
“Middlebrooks by his own admission fully participated in the capture of Kerrick Majors and in the infliction of severe physical and mental pain to the victim by acts of unimaginable cruelty, despite the young victim’s pleas for his life,” Anderson wrote. “Finally, after three to four hours of repeated sadistic acts, Middlebrooks stabbed the victim.”
Brewington, tried as an adult, was not eligible for the death penalty because of his age. He received consecutive sentences of life, 40 years and 35 years. Tammy Middlebrooks pled guilty to first degree murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
In another death penalty case, the Supreme Court granted the state’s application to appeal a decision by the Court of Criminal Appeals ordering a new trial and sentencing hearing for death row inmate Sylvester Smith. The Court of Criminal Appeals found that Smith’s attorney was deficient for failing to adequately investigate his client’s competency, sanity and mental retardation, rendering the trial and sentencing hearings fundamentally unfair.
The Supreme Court also granted a review of one issue raised by Smith in his response to the state’s application to appeal. The court will consider whether Smith’s rights were violated by the prosecution’s failure to disclose an alleged deal with a witness in exchange for his testimony against Smith.
Smith was sentenced to death for the 1989 Memphis murder of Olive Brewer. Smith beat the elderly widow, cut her throat and stole her jewelry and other items. His fingerprints and a bloody knife identified by Smith’s sister were found in the victim’s home.