State of Tennessee v. Mario Johnson

This is a direct appeal from convictions on a jury verdict of four counts of aggravated robbery. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-13-402. The Defendant was sentenced as a Range II, multiple offender to sixteen years for each conviction to be served consecutively in part for an effective thirty-two-year sentence. On appeal, the Defendant raises four issues: (1) the trial court erred in consolidating the Defendant’s two indictments for a single trial; (2) the admission of hearsay statements is plain error; (3) the trial court erred in failing to instruct the jury on the lesser-included offense of aggravated assault; and (4) the trial court’s imposition of consecutive sentences violated the Defendant’s constitutional rights pursuant to Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004). We affirm the judgments of the trial court.