(03/20/2000)
1,000 Area Students Participating in
Supreme Court Program
More than 1,000 students from 13 public and private high schools in the 12th Judicial District will participate March 28-29 in a state Supreme Court program designed to educate young Tennesseans about the judicial branch of government.
Students and their teachers from high schools in Franklin, Grundy and Marion counties will attend a special Supreme Court session March 28 at the Franklin County Courthouse in Winchester where justices will hear oral arguments in two actual cases. On March 29, students from high schools in Rhea, Sequatchie and Bledsoe counties will attend oral arguments in two cases at the Rhea County Courthouse in Dayton. About 250 students will attend each case. Following oral arguments, students will meet for question and answer sessions with the attorneys who presented each side in their cases.
All participating students and teachers also will be guests for lunch with the Supreme Court. During lunch, sponsored by the communities, the five justices, local judges, city, county and school officials and local attorneys will be seated at tables with the students.
Schools participating March 28 in SCALES - an acronym for the Supreme Court Advancing Legal Education for Students - are Franklin County High School, Saint Andrews School, Huntland High School, Grundy County High School, Marion County High School, Richard Hardy Memorial School, South Pittsburg High School and Whitwell High School.
Schools participating March 29 are Rhea County High School, Laurelwood Academy, Sequatchie County High School, Bledsoe County High School and Taft Youth Center.
Teachers whose classes are involved in the project attended a three-hour professional development session at the Chattanooga State Regional Skills Center in Kimball to prepare for the SCALES Program. Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Jerry Smith of Nashville discussed the state and federal court systems, answered questions and presented an overview of the cases to be argued when students attend SCALES. Teachers also were provided with notebooks of materials to use in their classrooms, including suggested activities, and SCALES Project handbooks for each student. The project is being coordinated in the 12th Judicial District by Chancellor Jeffrey Stewart.
"The Tennessee Supreme Court believes that knowledge and understanding of the judicial branch of government are essential to good citizenship,” Chief Justice Riley Anderson said. “The SCALES Project is designed to educate young participants about the system they will inherit. The interaction we have with the students at lunch and throughout the day also renews our faith that our nation’s future is in good hands.”
Local judges and attorneys met with teachers at the professional development session to schedule classroom visits to review the cases and issues to be considered by the Supreme Court. After justices rule in the cases, copies of the court's opinions will be provided to the classes.
"The SCALES Project is important because it creates a partnership between the judiciary, the Bar and schools to promote a better understanding of the judicial branch of government," the chief justice said. "We hope that teachers will use the materials to make judicial education a continuing part of their curriculum."
Issues in the cases students will hear March 28 are whether a death caused while fleeing the police 20 days after stealing a van should be considered a death caused “in the perpetration of theft, making it a felony murder, and whether aggravated arson is committed, rather than simple arson, if the person committing the crime is the only person injured as a result of the fire or explosion.
Students attending March 29 will hear cases involving the delivery and possession of cocaine and whether courts may divide the retirement benefits of unmarried couples that lived together as though they were married.
Including SCALES in the 12th Judicial District, more than 8,700 Tennessee students from 222 schools have taken part in the project since it was initiated by the state Supreme Court in 1995.
(03/06/2000)
State Supreme Court Rejects Appeal by Elderly Woman’s Killer
An appeal by David Lee McNish, who was sentenced to death in 1984 for the beating death of a 70-year-old woman in Elizabethton, Tennessee, was denied Monday by the state Supreme Court.
The court rejected eight issues raised by McNish in his post-conviction appeal, including whether electrocution is cruel and unusual punishment and whether he was denied his right to the effective assistance of counsel. Other issues raised were whether the prosecutor withheld information vital to the defense; whether the aggravating circumstance jurors used to impose the death sentence was constitutional; whether jury instructions during the sentencing phase of his trial were proper; and whether McNish received a full and fair post-conviction hearing.
The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed McNish’s first degree murder conviction and death sentence on direct appeal in 1987. McNish filed a petition for post conviction relief in 1990, which was denied by the trial court in 1997 and by the Court of Criminal Appeals in 1999.
McNish’s victim, Gladys Smith, was bludgeoned to death with a glass vase in the apartment where she lived alone. McNish, 31 at the time of the crime, was acquainted with the victim because his parents and girlfriend lived in the same apartment building. Police found bloodstained trousers in the car in which McNish was riding at the time of his arrest. Tests showed the blood matched that of the victim. McNish claimed his pants became bloody when he found her lying in the kitchen of her apartment and attempted to move her into the living room.
“The jury obviously did not accept appellants version of the events¼ the Supreme Court wrote in 1987. In sentencing McNish, jurors found the crime was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel in that it involved torture or depravity of mind.
(02/28/2000)
A post conviction appeal by inmate Donnie Edward Johnson, sentenced to death in Shelby County for the 1984 suffocation murder of his wife, was denied Monday by the Tennessee Supreme Court.
Johnson, 49, killed his wife, 30-year-old Connie Johnson, by stuffing a plastic bag in her throat after striking her on the head. The Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and sentence in 1987 and trial and appellate courts denied two subsequent post-conviction appeals.
In the appeal denied Monday, Johnson claimed his case should be reopened because the grand jury that indicted him was tainted by the fact that women were systematically excluded from serving as grand jury forepersons. In raising the issue, Johnson cited a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Campbell v. Louisiana, that dealt with the exclusion of minorities from grand juries.
(01/03/2000)
State Justices Deny Richard Austin Appeal
The Tennessee Supreme Court has denied an appeal by Richard Hale Austin, sentenced to death in 1977 and again this year for hiring an escaped convict to kill Julian Watkins, an undercover agent with the Memphis Police Department.
In 1997, the federal Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Austin’s conviction but reversed his sentence based on ineffective legal representation during the sentencing phase of his trial. Another Memphis jury resentenced him to death in March 1999 for arranging the execution-style murder of Watkins.
In the appeal denied Monday by the Tennessee Supreme Court, Austin, 60, claimed he was entitled to reopen a previous post-conviction petition because no woman had served as grand jury foreperson in Shelby County between 1962 and 1977, when he was indicted. Austin, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision, alleged that the exclusion violated his constitutional rights.
Austin’s victim was a vice squad undercover agent when he was shot to death. Watkins was to be a key witness for the prosecution against Austin and others charged with involvement in an illegal gambling operation.