State of Tennessee v. Tarrants Chandler

The defendant, Tarrants Chandler, was indicted by a grand jury for ten counts of rape by coercion, Class B felonies, and two counts of criminal exposure to HIV, Class C felonies.  After a trial, the jury convicted the defendant of nine counts of rape by coercion and one count of criminal exposure to HIV.  The trial court declared a mistrial as to Count 2, rape by coercion, and Count 12, criminal exposure to HIV.  The conviction in Count 1 was dismissed by the trial court after the motion for a new trial.  The defendant now appeals the remaining convictions, arguing that the evidence was not sufficient to find the defendant guilty of eight counts of rape by coercion, that the trial court erred by ruling that consent was not a defense to rape by coercion, that the trial court erred by failing to find prosecutorial misconduct based on aspects of the State’s closing argument, and that the trial court erred by imposing an effective fifty-year sentence on the defendant.  After a thorough review of the record, we affirm the judgments of the trial court but remand for: (1) entry of corrected judgments that reflect the dismissal of Count 1; and (2) to correct clerical errors in the judgments on both Count 6, because the judgment in Count 6 orders the sentence to be served concurrently  with the sentence from Count 2, which was declared a mistrial, and the judgment in Count 8, which states that the sentence is to be served concurrently, rather than consecutively to the sentence in Count 11.