State v. Tidwell, No. W2004-01820-CCA-R3-CD (TN 7/21/2005), W2004-01820-CCA-R3-CD.
| Decision Date | 21 July 2005 |
| Docket Number | No. W2004-01820-CCA-R3-CD.,W2004-01820-CCA-R3-CD. |
| Parties | STATE OF TENNESSEE, v. STEVEN ANDREW TIDWELL. |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
Appeal from the Circuit Court for Madison County; No. 03-441; Roy B. Morgan, Jr., Judge.
Judgment of the Trial Court Affirmed.
Ramsdale O'DeNeal, Jr., Jackson, Tennessee, for the appellant, Steven Andrew Tidwell.
Paul G. Summers, Attorney General & Reporter; Preston Shipp, Assistant Attorney General; and Jody S. Pickens, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.
Gary R. Wade, P.J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which Joseph M. Tipton and Alan E. Glenn, JJ., joined.
The defendant, Steven Andrew Tidwell, tried for aggravated burglary and theft of property between $500 and $1,000, was convicted of theft. The trial court imposed a two-year sentence to be served in the Department of Correction. In this appeal of right, the defendant argues that the evidence was insufficient, that the trial court erred by ruling that the state could cross-examine him with a prior burglary offense for which he had received judicial diversion, and that the sentence is excessive. The judgment of the trial court is affirmed.
At approximately 7:30 p.m. on March 25, 2003, Dr. James E. Selby, the Vice President for Student Services at Jackson State Community College, encountered the defendant in a second-floor computer lab located in the Nelms Building on campus. As he walked past the lab, he saw the defendant through a window in the door "walking in a crouched position" and carrying a computer CPU (central processing unit). When Dr. Selby opened the door, the defendant hurriedly placed the component behind the cabinet of a television stand. Another computer had also been unplugged and removed from its mounting. When asked what he was doing, the defendant hesitated, then explained that someone who had identified himself as Ryan Sparks with the school's Office of Information Technology had asked him to get "some computers ready to be taken out of [there]" because they needed to be picked up for repair. The defendant, who was a student at the college at the time of the offense, provided his identification card for Dr. Selby and then left at his request. After calling security to assure that the lab was locked, Dr. Shelby learned that the defendant, who resided fifty miles away, did not have a class on campus that evening and did not have any of his scheduled courses in the Nelms Building.
At trial, Diane Harris, Jackson's State's Director of Human Resources and Affirmative Action, testified that computerized records dating back to 1985 indicated that the college had never employed anyone named Ryan Sparks. Frances Edmondson, the Registrar of the school, testified that the College had enrolled three students with similar names in the past: Robert G. Sparks in the fall of 1989; Robert Ryan Sparks in the fall of 1998 and spring of 1999; and Ryan Lee Sparks in the fall of 2003. She determined that no one named Ryan Sparks was enrolled in the school in the spring of 2003.
Ryan Lee Sparks testified that he was not a student in the spring of 2003 and that he had never been employed by the Office of Information Technology. Robert Ryan Sparks provided similar testimony. Ryan Keith Sparks, who had never been a student at Jackson State, testified that he had gone to high school with the defendant but had not seen him since graduating in 2001.
Robert Grissom, the Director of the Office of Information Technology, testified that the computer CPUs in question would have been valued at approximately $760 at the time of the offense. Linda Sego, a technical services manager who supervises all of the school's computer technicians, including repair work orders, testified that there was no employee named Ryan Sparks and there was nothing wrong with the two computers that had been moved by the defendant.
The defendant testified that at the time of the offense, he was a student at Jackson State, where he had been enrolled for approximately a year and a half. He stated that during that time, he was also employed at a Hardee's restaurant in Selmer, where he lived, and at an IHOP restaurant in Jackson. He claimed that on the day of the offense, he had gone to Jackson to do some shopping at the mall and decided to stop by the computer lab to type an article he needed to summarize for class. It was his testimony that just as he was finishing his paper, a man with a walkie-talkie and a gold name tag that read "Jackson State OIT" and "Ryan Sparks" came into the lab and asked whether the defendant "minded helping him out, he had a lot of work to get done." The defendant testified as follows:
I thought I'd be a good Samaritan and help him out a little bit. I asked what he needed. He said he had to take two computers out of that lab. They needed to have the hard drive images re-ghosted on them, and he had to take them from there over to the main office at the OIT building, and he had to go get the dolly to put them on and he would be right back, and I said okay. I unhooked one of the two computers and went and set it over in the corner where he had pointed and told me to, and at that time was when Dr. Selby came in.
The defendant testified that he had selected the Nelms Building computer lab to work in that evening because he had had a class in that building the previous semester and was familiar with it. The defendant admitted a prior burglary offense in McNairy County in February 2003. He also acknowledged that he had a computer at his residence at the time of the offense.
Initially, the defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence. In a related issue, he also claims that the trial court erred by denying his motion for judgment of acquittal at the close of the state's proof.
Rule 29 of the Tennessee Rules of Criminal Procedure empowers the trial judge to direct a judgment of acquittal when the evidence is insufficient to warrant a conviction either at the time the state rests or at the conclusion of all the evidence. Overturf v. State, 571 S.W.2d 837 (Tenn. 1978). At the point the motion is made, the trial court must favor the opponent of the motion with the strongest legitimate view of the evidence, including all reasonable inferences, and discard any countervailing evidence. Hill v. State, 470 S.W.2d 853 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1971). The standard by which the trial court determines a motion for judgment of acquittal at that time is, in essence, the same standard which applies on appeal in determining the sufficiency of the evidence after a conviction. State v. Ball, 973 S.W.2d 288, 292 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1998); State v. Anderson, 880 S.W.2d 720, 726 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1994).
Where a defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence, the state is entitled to the strongest legitimate view of the evidence and all reasonable inferences which might be drawn therefrom. State v. Cabbage, 571 S.W.2d 832, 835 (Tenn. 1978). The credibility of the witnesses, the weight to be given their testimony, and the reconciliation of conflicts in the proof are matters entrusted to the jury as the trier of fact. Liakas v. State, 199 Tenn. 298, 286 S.W.2d 856, 859 (1956); Byrge v. State, 575 S.W.2d 292, 295 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1978). On appeal, the relevant question is whether, after reviewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the state, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Tenn. R. App. P. 13(e); State v. Williams, 657 S.W.2d 405, 410 (Tenn. 1983). Because a verdict of guilt removes the presumption of innocence and raises a presumption of guilt, the convicted criminal defendant bears the burden of showing that the evidence was legally insufficient to sustain a guilty verdict. State v. Evans, 838 S.W.2d 185, 191 (Tenn. 1992).
"A person commits theft of property if, with intent to deprive the owner of property, the person knowingly obtains or exercises control over the property without the owner's effective consent." Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-14-103. "' Knowing' refers to a person who acts knowingly with respect to the conduct or to circumstances surrounding the conduct when the person is aware of the nature of the conduct or that the circumstances exist." Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-11-302(b).
The defendant admits that he "exercised control" over the school's computers but contends that he did not have the requisite intent to deprive the school of its property. He argues that he was "assisting, in his mind, an employee of the school who said the computer was in need of repair." In our view, this was a classic credibility question, falling well within the purview of the jury. Dr. James Selby testified that he discovered the defendant moving computers during evening hours at a computer lab on the Jackson State campus. When questioned, the defendant hesitated before providing information that proved to be false. Through the testimony of numerous witnesses, the state introduced evidence that no person named Ryan Sparks, whom the defendant had claimed to be assisting, had ever been employed by the college or was enrolled as a student that semester. Although the defendant denied having been engaged in the theft of the computers, the jury, who observed his demeanor first-hand, accredited the testimony of the state's witnesses, as was its prerogative, and chose not to accredit that of the defendant. See State v. Summerall, 926 S.W.2d 272, 275 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1995). The evidence was sufficient for a rational trier of fact to have found beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime of theft.
Next, claiming that "[p]rior bad acts are not admissible in criminal cases," the defendant contends that the trial court erred by permitting the state to cross-examine...
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