State v. Dellinger
| Decision Date | 07 May 2002 |
| Citation | 79 S.W.3d 458 |
| Parties | STATE of Tennessee v. James Henderson DELLINGER and Gary Wayne Sutton. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
F.D. Gibson, Maryville, Tennessee, and John M. Goergen, McMinnville, Tennessee, for the appellant, Gary Wayne Sutton.
Charles Deas and Eugene Dixon, Maryville, Tennessee, for the appellant, James Henderson Dellinger.
Michael E. Moore, Solicitor General; and Jennifer L. Smith and Kenneth W. Rucker, Assistant Attorneys General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.
Paula R. Voss, Knoxville, Tennessee for the amicus curiae, Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Marjorie A. Bristol, Assistant Post-Conviction Defender, for the amicus curiae, Office of the Post-Conviction Defender.
JANICE M. HOLDER, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which FRANK F. DROWOTA, III, C.J., and E. RILEY ANDERSON, and WILLIAM M. BARKER, JJ, joined.
James Henderson Dellinger and Gary Wayne Sutton were convicted of first degree premeditated murder in the death of Tommy Mayford Griffin. Dellinger and Sutton were both sentenced to death, and the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed their convictions and sentences. We entered an order designating the following issues for oral argument:1 1) whether the indictments violate the United States Constitution as construed in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000); 2) whether the trial court erred in refusing to grant the defendants a severance or to grant separate juries for each defendant; 3) whether the trial court erred in dismissing the jury selection expert previously granted the defendants; 4) whether the trial court erred in refusing to suppress evidence seized from Dellinger's residence under a search warrant; 5) whether the evidence supports the jury's finding of aggravating circumstance (i)(2); 6) whether the trial court erred in failing to instruct the jury at sentencing that the identity of the defendants in prior convictions must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt; 7) whether the trial court erred in refusing to charge the jury as a mitigating factor that the defendants are human beings; 8) whether the trial court erred in refusing to answer the jury's question about the manner of serving life sentences; and 9) whether the sentences of death are excessive or disproportionate under Tenn.Code Ann. § 39-13-206(c)(1)(D). Having carefully reviewed these issues and the remainder of the issues raised by Dellinger and Sutton, we find no merit to their arguments.2 Accordingly, we affirm the Court of Criminal Appeals in all respects.
FACTUAL BACKGROUND
On the afternoon of February 21, 1992, Dellinger, Sutton, and Griffin spent several hours at Howie's Hideaway Lounge (Howie's) on Highway 321 in Maryville, Tennessee. The three men drank beer and played pool until approximately 7:00 p.m., when they left the bar in a dark-blue Camaro. Witnesses testified that there was no evidence of hostility among the men while they were in the bar.
Around 7:00 p.m. Cynthia and Kenneth Walker were traveling north on Alcoa Highway near the Hunt Road exit. They observed three men who appeared to be fighting in a dark-colored Camaro on the side of the road. Two of the men were standing outside of the car attempting to forcibly remove the third man from the back seat. Kenneth Walker used his portable radio to report the incident to the dispatcher for Rural Metro Blount County Ambulance.
Sharon Davis, who was also driving north on Alcoa Highway around the same time, observed a shirtless and shoeless man stumbling down the side of the road near the Hunt Road exit. When Davis passed the same area about thirty or forty minutes later, she saw two men standing outside of a dark-colored Camaro on the side of the road. They appeared to be looking for something.
At 7:11 p.m. Sandra Hicks, a dispatcher for Blount County 911, received a complaint about an altercation involving three men in a dark Camaro at the intersection of Alcoa Highway and Hunt Road. Officer Steve Brooks with the Alcoa Police Department was dispatched to the scene. While making an unrelated traffic stop, Officer Brooks noticed a vehicle with flashing headlights parked on the side of Hunt Road. The officer sent his backup, Officer Drew Roberts, to investigate. Officer Roberts found two men, not Dellinger and Sutton, standing next to a pickup truck. A shirtless man sitting on the bed of the truck identified himself as Griffin. Griffin told the officer that his friends had put him out of a car. Griffin would not identify his friends or tell the officer what had happened. Officer Roberts arrested Griffin for public intoxication. Griffin was booked at the Blount County jail at 7:40 p.m. Dellinger arrived about forty-five minutes to an hour later to ask about Griffin's release. Sergeant Ray Herron explained to Dellinger that department policy required a minimum four-hour detention for public intoxication and advised him to come back at 10:30 or 11:00 p.m.
Alvin Henry was a resident of Bluff Heights Road, where Dellinger and Griffin both lived. At approximately 9:00 p.m., Henry looked out of his trailer window and saw Dellinger's white Dodge pickup truck. Henry saw someone enter the passenger side of the truck. The truck drove up the road and pulled into Dellinger's driveway. Henry then noticed fire shooting from Griffin's trailer down the road. Henry's wife reported the fire to the 911 operator at 9:02 p.m. Arson investigator Gary Clabo concluded that the fire was set intentionally with the use of a liquid-type accelerant and an open flame such as a match, candle, or cigarette lighter.
Jennifer Branam, Griffin's niece, ran to Dellinger's trailer when she learned that Griffin's trailer was on fire. Just as Dellinger's wife was telling Jennifer that Dellinger was not home, Dellinger and Sutton walked down the hall from the living room. The two men were still wearing their jackets, and their pants were wet up to the knees. Jennifer asked them if Griffin was in his burning trailer, and Sutton told her that Griffin was in Blount County with a girl. When Jennifer asked the men to accompany her to the trailer, Dellinger responded that they were already in enough trouble.
After returning home, Jennifer looked out the window and saw Dellinger remove an object wrapped in a sheet from his truck and place it into the back of his wife's Oldsmobile. Jennifer testified that the object resembled a shotgun. Herman Lewis, a relative of Jennifer, also observed Dellinger moving an object from his truck to his wife's car shortly after 10:00 p.m. Dellinger and Sutton then left in the Oldsmobile.
At around 11:25 p.m. Dellinger and Sutton returned to the Blount County jail. Dellinger paid a cash bond for Griffin. Officers in the jail lobby overheard one of the defendants tell Griffin that they needed to get him back to Sevier County. At 11:55 p.m. Jason McDonald and his mother, Brenda McKeehan, heard two gunshots fired from an area on the Little River in Blount County called the Blue Hole. The Blue Hole is approximately five hundred yards down the hill from McDonald's residence.
The next morning, February 22, Jennifer Branam saw Dellinger leave his trailer, remove the object he had placed in his wife's car the night before, and place the object under his trailer.
Around noon on February 22, Connie Branam, Jennifer's mother and Griffin's sister, informed her daughter Sandy of her intent to go to Blount County to look for Griffin. At about 2:00 p.m., Connie Branam went to Jerry Sullivan's grocery store in Townsend asking if anyone had seen her brother. Sullivan then saw Branam speaking with two men in a white Dodge pickup truck in the grocery store parking lot.
Later that afternoon, Connie Branam accompanied Dellinger and Sutton to Howie's. Branam told Jamie Carr, who worked as the afternoon bartender at Howie's, that she was looking for her brother. Responding to Dellinger's questioning, Carr repeatedly told them that she remembered Dellinger, Sutton, and Griffin from the night before. When Dellinger asked if Carr remembered with whom Griffin left, she responded that they were still at the bar when her shift ended. Dellinger told Carr that they last saw Griffin with a short, dark-haired, ugly woman. When Carr's shift ended at 5:00 p.m. on February 22, Branam, Dellinger, and Sutton were still drinking beer in the bar.
Terry Lilly Newman worked the shift following Carr's at Howie's. When she approached Branam, Dellinger, and Sutton to ask if they needed anything, Dellinger asked Newman if she remembered them from the night before. Newman responded that she recalled seeing Dellinger and Sutton with another man drinking beer and playing pool. Branam explained that she was looking for her brother and asked with whom he had left the bar. Newman became confused because she knew that Griffin had left with Dellinger and Sutton. Dellinger asked Newman if she remembered them returning to Howie's after they bailed Griffin out of jail, but Newman knew that the three had not returned to Howie's because she had worked until closing. After unsuccessfully attempting to convince Newman to join them in their search for Griffin, Sutton asked Newman if she was married. When Newman responded that she was married, Sutton stated, "[W]ell, your husband is going to be surprised whenever you're missing one morning, when he wakes up and you're missing." Dellinger, Sutton, and Branam left Howie's around 6:30 p.m.
About 8:00 p.m. that night, James and Barbara Gordon observed a fire in the woods near the Clear Fork area of Sevier County. The following morning, Barbara Gordon watched a white truck occupied by two men leave the woods and head toward the main road. She testified that the truck was traveling rapidly and that it came from the general area where they had...
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State v. Faulkner
...has resolved the question of whether the Apprendi holding is applicable to Tennessee's capital sentencing procedure. In State v. Dellinger, 79 S.W.3d 458, 466-67 (Tenn.), cert. denied, ___U.S.___, 123 S. Ct. 695 (2002), the court dismissed a similar claim involving the constitutionality of ......