State of Tennessee v. Louis Bernard Williams

The defendant, Louis Bernard Williams, was convicted by a Madison County jury of possession of more than one-half ounce of marijuana with the intent to sell or deliver, a Class E felony, and possession of drug paraphernalia and evading arrest, both Class A misdemeanors. The trial court sentenced him as a Range II, multiple offender to four years in the Department of Correction for the felony conviction and to eleven months, twenty-nine days in the county jail for each of the misdemeanor convictions and ordered that the evading arrest sentence be served consecutively to the sentence for possession of marijuana. The trial court also ordered that the defendant serve the sentences consecutively to his eight-year sentence for a felony for which he had been on probation at the time of the instant offenses and consecutively to a nine-year sentence he had received for additional offenses he committed while out on bond in the instant case. The defendant raises three issues on appeal: (1) whether the evidence was sufficient to sustain his convictions; (2) whether the trial court erred in excluding the hearsay statement of a man who claimed ownership of the drugs; and (3) whether the trial court erred in not declaring a mistrial when a law enforcement officer referred at trial to the defendant’s having been on probation at the time of the offenses. Following our review, we affirm the judgments of the trial court