State of Tennessee v. Christopher Terrell Shipp

The Defendant, Christopher Terrell Shipp, was convicted by a jury of one count of criminally negligent homicide, one count of felony murder, two counts of attempted aggravated robbery, and one count of attempted second degree murder, and he received an aggregate sentence of life in prison. The surviving victim of the crimes identified the Defendant as the perpetrator during her testimony at the preliminary hearing, but she died of natural causes prior to trial. The recorded testimony from the preliminary hearing was used to establish the identity of the Defendant at trial. The Defendant appeals his convictions, arguing that the evidence was insufficient to uphold the verdicts and that the victim’s testimony was admitted in error because at the time of the preliminary hearing, he had not had access to a police report which could have impeached her testimony. After a thorough review of the record, we conclude that the evidence is sufficient to uphold the verdicts and that the testimony was properly admitted, and we affirm the trial court’s judgments. We remand for merger of the criminally negligent homicide conviction into the felony murder conviction.