State v. Scarbrough, E2003-02850-SC-S09-CD.
| Decision Date | 30 November 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. E2003-02850-SC-S09-CD.,E2003-02850-SC-S09-CD. |
| Citation | 181 S.W.3d 650 |
| Parties | STATE of Tennessee v. David SCARBROUGH. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
Paul G. Summers, Attorney General & Reporter; Michael E. Moore, Solicitor General; Brent C. Cherry, Assistant Attorney General; Randall E. Nichols, District Attorney General; and William H. Crabtree, Assistant District Attorney General, for the Appellant, State of Tennessee.
Leslie M. Jeffress, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the Appellee, David Leon Scarbrough.
E. RILEY ANDERSON, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which WILLIAM M. BARKER, C.J., and ADOLPHO A. BIRCH, JR., and JANICE M. HOLDER, JJ., joined.
We granted this interlocutory appeal prior to the defendant's retrial for felony murder to address the following issue: whether the defendant may contest his guilt as to the felony underlying the felony murder charge where the felony conviction for aggravated burglary was affirmed on direct appeal but the felony murder conviction was reversed. The trial court found that the defendant was prohibited from challenging his guilt as to the underlying felony of aggravated burglary because that conviction was final. The Court of Criminal Appeals concluded, however, that the doctrine of collateral estoppel does not prevent the defendant from contesting his guilt as to the underlying felony of aggravated burglary during the retrial for the charge of felony murder. After reviewing the record and applicable authority, we conclude that the use of collateral estoppel by the prosecution against the defendant to establish an essential element of the charged offense violates the right to trial by jury under article I, section 6 of the Tennessee Constitution. We further conclude, however, that the prosecution is permitted to introduce evidence of the prior conviction of aggravated burglary if the trial court determines that its probative value is not substantially outweighed by the risk of unfair prejudice to the defendant. Accordingly, we affirm the Court of Criminal Appeals' judgment, and we remand to the trial court to hold the retrial consistent with the principles in this opinion.
In 1998, in the Criminal Court of Knox County, Tennessee, the defendant, David Scarbrough, was convicted of two counts of felony murder, two counts of theft, and one count of aggravated burglary. The evidence in the record is summarized below.1
On February 4, 1995, the victims, Lester and Carol Dotts, were shot to death in their home in Knox County, Tennessee. Lester Dotts was shot five times and Carol Dotts was shot seven times with a 9 mm weapon. Their home had been broken into and ransacked.
At the defendant's trial, Harley Watts, age thirteen, testified that he had been riding around in a car on the night of the murders with Scarbrough and Thomas Gagne. According to Watts, Gagne drove to a "rich" neighborhood, parked at a dead-end street, and said he intended to burglarize one of the homes. Gagne and Scarbrough got out of the car and Watts remained inside. Watts testified that when Gagne and Scarbrough hurriedly returned to the car thirty minutes later, Scarbrough was carrying a 9 mm gun, which he handed to Gagne as they drove away. Watts further testified that Gagne said, "somebody came out on [me] and [I] started shooting," and that Gagne later threw something out of the car.
Scarbrough told police that he was with Gagne and Watts on the night of the murders and that Gagne, who was in possession of a 9 mm gun, drove to the victims' neighborhood. Scarbrough stated that he waited behind the victims' house while Gagne went inside. After fifteen minutes, he heard gunshots and ran back to the car. Gagne also ran back to the car where, according to Scarbrough, he said, "I had to do it." Defendant Scarbrough later told police that he had been in possession of the 9 mm gun when he got out of the car but that he gave the gun to Gagne.
At trial, Scarbrough testified that he was not at the scene and was not involved in the crimes at all. He claimed that he was pressured to give the statements to police and that he had learned the details of the murders from Watts and from newspapers. The defendant testified that he was with his girlfriend, Kasey Keirsey, on the night of the murders. Keirsey admitted at trial, however, that she had been at a school basketball game with her friends on the night of the murders and that Scarbrough had not been with her at the basketball game.
At the close of the trial, the jury convicted the defendant of two counts of felony murder, two counts of theft, and one count of aggravated burglary. On appeal, the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the felony murder convictions after concluding that the trial court failed to instruct the jury on the lesser included offense of facilitation of first degree murder. The intermediate court, however, upheld the convictions for theft and aggravated burglary.
The case was remanded to the trial court for retrial on the felony murder charges. Before the retrial, however, the State filed a pretrial motion arguing that it should be permitted to rely on the defendant's conviction for aggravated burglary to prove the underlying felony for the felony murder at the retrial. The State reasoned that the defendant's aggravated burglary conviction was final and that the doctrines of "law of the case" and collateral estoppel prohibited the defendant from arguing that he did not commit the offense of aggravated burglary. The defendant disagreed, arguing that the State's position would violate his constitutional rights to a fair trial and a trial by jury.
After the completion of the argument, the trial court applied the "law of the case" doctrine and concluded that the State could rely on (and the defendant could not challenge) the final conviction for aggravated burglary in the retrial for felony murder. An interlocutory appeal was requested by the defendant, which was granted by both the trial court and the Court of Criminal Appeals. The Court of Criminal Appeals then held that the "law of the case" doctrine was inapplicable and that the collateral estoppel doctrine cannot be applied against a defendant. The intermediate court explained that the "defendant's constitutional right to a jury trial would be violated by the trial court's order which ... prevents him presenting proof which would question the burglary conviction."
We granted the State's application to this Court for further interlocutory review.
We begin by summarizing the parties' arguments with respect to the collateral estoppel issue.2 In arguing that the defendant is prohibited from challenging his guilt as to aggravated burglary during the retrial for felony murder, the State makes two main points: first, that applying collateral estoppel does not violate the defendant's constitutional right to a jury trial because he was convicted of aggravated burglary by a jury and the conviction is final; and second, that applying collateral estoppel to prevent the defendant from challenging the aggravated burglary conviction is in the interest of judicial efficiency.
To support these arguments, the State urges the Court to adopt a balancing analysis which would consider a number of factors in determining whether collateral estoppel may be applied in a given case. The suggested factors include an analysis of whether the issue and the defendant are identical to those in the prior proceeding, whether the defendant had a full and fair opportunity to actually litigate the issue, whether the prior charge was a felony, whether the sentence was sufficiently serious to provide an incentive to appeal and whether the prosecutor brought separate prosecutions for strategic reasons or in bad faith. See Richard B. Kennelly, Jr., Precluding the Accused: Offensive Collateral Estoppel in Criminal Cases, 80 Va. L.Rev. 1379, 1423 (1994).
In response, the defendant contends that applying collateral estoppel principles would violate his constitutional rights to a fair trial and a jury trial in his retrial for felony murder. The defendant argues that the same jury must consider all the evidence in the same proceeding to find the facts, to determine whether the essential elements of the charged offense have been proven, and to determine guilt or innocence.
We begin our analysis by reviewing the principles of collateral estoppel. This Court has said that "[o]nce an issue has been actually or necessarily determined by a court of competent jurisdiction, the doctrine of collateral estoppel renders that determination conclusive on the parties and their privies in subsequent litigation, even when the claims or causes of action are different." Gibson v. Trant, 58 S.W.3d 103, 113 (Tenn.2001) (quoting State ex rel. Cihlar v. Crawford, 39 S.W.3d 172, 178-79 (Tenn.Ct.App.2000)). In other words, an issue finally determined in a prior proceeding must be accepted as established in a later proceeding. The doctrine of collateral estoppel "promotes finality, conserves judicial resources, and prevents inconsistent decisions." Gibson, 58 S.W.3d at 113.
The doctrine of collateral estoppel, which has its origin in civil cases, applies only when "the issue involved in the case under consideration has already been litigated in a prior suit between the same parties, even though based upon a different cause of action, if the determination of such issue in the former action was necessary to the judgment." Dickerson v. Godfrey, 825 S.W.2d 692, 694 (Tenn.1992) (quoting Home Ins. Co. v. Leinart, 698 S.W.2d 335, 336 (Tenn.1985)). The party who seeks to bar litigation of an issue by invoking collateral estoppel "has the burden of proving that the issue was, in fact, determined in a prior suit between the same parties and that the issue's determination was necessary to the judgment." Dickerson, 825 S.W.2d at 695.
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