State v. White
| Decision Date | 09 March 2012 |
| Docket Number | No. M2009–00941–SC–R11–CD.,M2009–00941–SC–R11–CD. |
| Citation | 362 S.W.3d 559 |
| Parties | STATE of Tennessee v. Jason Lee WHITE. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Gordon W. Smith and Joseph F. Whalen, Associate Solicitors General; Rachel E. Willis, Assistant Attorney General; John W. Carney, District Attorney General; and Robert Nash, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellant, State of Tennessee.
R. Lance Miller, Clarksville, Tennessee, for the appellee, Jason Lee White.
Kathy Morante, Nashville, Tennessee; William Crabtree, Knoxville, Tennessee; Garland Erguden, Memphis, Tennessee, for the Amicus Curiae, Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference.Stephen Ross Johnson, Ann C. Short, and Wade V. Davies, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Aimee D. Solway, Nashville, Tennessee, for the Amicus Curiae, Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
After robbing a Clarksville restaurant, the defendant was indicted for burglary, aggravated robbery, and especially aggravated kidnapping. A jury convicted the defendant on all three counts, after which he filed a motion to set aside the conviction for especially aggravated kidnapping as violative of due process, relying on State v. Anthony, 817 S.W.2d 299 (Tenn.1991). The trial court denied the motion and sentenced the defendant to an effective twenty-five year term. The Court of Criminal Appeals reversed and dismissed the conviction for especially aggravated kidnapping on due process grounds. This Court granted the State's application for permission to appeal. Following briefing and oral argument, we ordered additional briefing and argument addressing the application of due process principles to dual convictions for kidnapping and an accompanying felony, such as rape or robbery. We hold that the legislature did not intend for the kidnapping statutes to apply to the removal or confinement of a victim that is essentially incidental to an accompanying felony, such as rape or robbery. This inquiry, however, is a question for the jury after appropriate instructions, which appellate courts review under the sufficiency of the evidence standard as the due process safeguard. Because the defendant is entitled to a new trial with specific instructions as to the especially aggravated kidnapping charge, the cause is remanded to the trial court for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.
On the night of January 8, 2008, a robbery occurred at a White Castle Restaurant in Clarksville, Tennessee. After reviewing the restaurant's security video, police were able to identify Jason Lee White (the “Defendant”) as a suspect. The Defendant, who was indicted for burglary, aggravated robbery, and especially aggravated kidnapping, voluntarily surrendered to the police.
At trial, the proof indicated that the Defendant entered the restaurant shortly before closing and then hid in the men's restroom. Denise Wright, the crew manager, and Penyatta Payne were the only employees on duty. Ms. Wright testified that at approximately 11:55 p.m., she locked the outside doors before checking the restrooms. As she entered the women's restroom, the Defendant approached her from behind, forced her “down on all fours,” and kicked her. The Defendant then took the set of keys off of her right arm, ordered her to remain in the restroom, and walked to the employee area in the back of the restaurant where the safe was located. When the Defendant returned, he asked Ms. Wright if she had other keys. She responded that they were in her pocket. At that point, the Defendant pointed a gun to the back of her head and directed her to the employee area where Ms. Payne was unsuccessfully attempting to open the safe. Ms. Wright used her key to gain entry to the safe. The Defendant took a computer monitor, cell phones, and $1,400.00 in cash. As he left the restaurant, the Defendant removed all of the telephones and directed the two women to lie down on the floor and wait eight or nine minutes. After following his instructions, Ms. Wright and Ms. Payne walked to a nearby Wal–Mart to report the crime. Ms. Wright did not see the Defendant's face during the course of the robbery and was unable to identify him in any of a number of photographic line-ups. She did, however, remember that her assailant wore a red hoodie and black pants and that he had claimed that another individual participated in the robbery. She otherwise had no knowledge of the involvement of anyone else in the crime.
Ms. Payne, who previously pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact to the robbery, appeared as a witness for the State. She testified that she had known the Defendant for about two years and that the two “ha[d] been intimate once.” Ms. Payne stated that the Defendant had called her two or three months before the robbery to ask whether she thought he could rob the restaurant. On the actual date of the robbery, he again asked her about robbing the restaurant. She claimed that when she informed the Defendant that it was not “a good idea” and that “he wouldn't get that much money out of it,” he responded that a robbery at that location “might be like taking candy from a baby.” At the usual closing time for the restaurant and after the doors had been locked, Ms. Payne was aware that the Defendant was inside the restaurant. As she opened the door to the employee area “and let the door go, [the Defendant] walked in,” handed her a key, and directed her to open up the safe. Because he had the wrong key, he left briefly and returned with Ms. Wright. After admitting that she did not initially inform the police who had committed the crime “[b]ecause [she] was scared of ... what he might do,” she identified the Defendant as the perpetrator.
Detective Desmoine Chestnut of the Clarksville Police Department, who investigated the robbery, first questioned both Ms. Wright and Ms. Payne. Meanwhile, another detective, who was creating still photographs from the restaurant's surveillance video, recognized the Defendant. During his review of the video, Detective Chestnut noticed that Ms. Payne had made a phone call from the restaurant and, in contrast to Ms. Wright, “had free reign ... to come in and out [of the] hallway” during the course of the robbery. Based on this suspicious footage, Detective Chestnut conducted a second interview with Ms. Payne, who acknowledged her connection with the Defendant. Detective Chestnut also found that on the day of the robbery, a number of calls and text messages were exchanged between Ms. Payne's telephone number and a phone number belonging to the Defendant's mother. He also discovered that on the same date, a phone call had been placed from the White Castle telephone number to the number belonging to the Defendant's mother.
The Defendant, who at trial professed his innocence of the crime, claimed he was living with his girlfriend, Amelia Shine, at the time of the robbery and was running a successful business as a freelance photographer. While asserting that he first learned of the robbery from the local newspaper, he insisted that he could not have committed the robbery because he was in bed that night before 10:00 p.m. The Defendant admitted that he had first told police that he did not know Ms. Payne, but explained that he knew her only as “Flower” and “didn't know [her] by her real name.” He described Ms. Payne as a marginal acquaintance. The Defendant also testified that he knew who committed the robbery but would not tell the police because “it [was] not [his] job to do their job.” On cross-examination, he admitted that he was known by several different names, including “Jason Broadnax,” “Cheerio,” and “Oso.”
At the conclusion of the proof, the jury returned verdicts of guilt for burglary, aggravated robbery, and especially aggravated kidnapping. Afterward, the Defendant filed a motion to set aside the conviction for especially aggravated kidnapping as violative of due process, arguing that the facts in his case were “remarkably similar” to those in Anthony, 817 S.W.2d at 299, abrogated by State v. Dixon, 957 S.W.2d 532 (Tenn.1997), where this Court held that dual convictions for armed robbery and aggravated kidnapping, when the latter was essentially incidental to the former, violated constitutional protections.
The trial court, after hearing argument, commented that the issue was “very close frankly,” but denied the motion and ruled that because Ms. Wright was subjected to potential harm by being confined to the restroom, the kidnapping was sufficiently distinct from the robbery. The Defendant, sentenced as a Range II offender, received concurrent sentences as follows: six years for burglary, fifteen years for aggravated robbery, and twenty-five years for especially aggravated kidnapping. Because the Defendant was on parole at the time of the offenses, the effective twenty-five year sentence was ordered to be served consecutively to the sentence for which he was on parole.
The Court of Criminal Appeals reversed and dismissed the conviction for especially aggravated kidnapping on due process grounds. State v. White, No. M2009–00941–CCA–R3–CD, 2010 WL 1930951, at *7–8 . This Court granted the State's application for permission to appeal. The issues initially presented for our review were: (1) whether the Court of Criminal Appeals erred by ruling that the Defendant's especially aggravated kidnapping conviction violated due process; and (2) whether the double jeopardy analysis articulated in State v. Denton, 938 S.W.2d 373 (Tenn.1996), should be substituted for the due process analysis adopted in Dixon, 957 S.W.2d at 532, when determining whether the proof supports a separate conviction for...
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