Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 12 June 1978
• Citation: 565 S.W.2d 503
• Parties: Thomas WILLIAMS, Petitioner, v. STATE of Tennessee, Respondent.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

Page 503

565 S.W.2d 503

Thomas WILLIAMS, Petitioner, v. STATE of Tennessee, Respondent.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

June 12, 1978.

Petition to Rehear Denied August 7, 1978.

Jay Fred Friedman, Memphis, for petitioner.

Brooks McLemore, Atty. Gen., John F. Southworth, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Nashville, for respondent.

OPINION

FONES, Justice.

The question addressed in this opinion is whether a defendant who has laid a proper foundation by pleading and evidence presenting the issue of self defense may adduce proof of specific acts of violence committed by the victim ¹ against third parties, knowledge of which has been communicated to defendant prior to the homicide, for the purpose of showing defendant's state of apprehension.

Defendant was convicted of the second degree murder of one Morris Webb and sentenced to fifty years incarceration. Defendant admitted that he killed Webb, but alleged that he did so in self-defense. The trial judge allowed defense witness Fred Parker to testify that Webb had a reputation for violence, but the judge sustained the State's objection to testimony by Parker concerning specific acts of violence directed against Parker and his wife by Webb.

Defendant relied upon Holt v. State, 170 Tenn. 76, 92 S.W.2d 397 (1936) as authority for the admissibility of Parker's testimony.

The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction and the incompetence of Parker's testimony, expressing the opinion that Holt was overruled sub silentio by this Court in Chaffin v. State, 209 Tenn. 590, 354 S.W.2d 772 (1962), and noting that Chaffin was followed in Broz v. State, 4 Tenn.Cr.App. 457, 472 S.W.2d 907 (1971), and Henley v. State, 520 S.W.2d 361 (Tenn.Cr.App.1974). We granted certiorari to consider the conflict between Holt and Chaffin.

The State's proof established that Webb was at the home of his mother at about 9:00 p. m. on December 24, 1975, when the defendant, accompanied by a woman and a child, drove his pick-up truck into the alley behind the apartment and began honking his horn. Both Webb's mother and a neighbor who was sitting in his car in the alley testified that Webb was shot immediately after opening the door, and that he had nothing in his hands. No weapon was found near his body.

The defendant was apprehended later that evening. A single-shot shotgun containing a spent shell and smelling like it had been recently fired, was found in defendant's truck. Defendant admitted to the arresting officers that he had killed Webb.

Defendant testified that he had returned from a hunting trip that evening, and that he had subsequently picked up the woman and child who were with him when he drove up to Webb's mother's house. The child had requested money from the woman to go skating, which request was denied, whereupon the child got out of the truck, and defendant, hoping to convince the woman to give the child the money, blew his horn to get the child to return to the truck.

According to defendant, Webb came out of his mother's apartment armed with a pistol, and in the time it took Webb to walk briskly approximately twelve feet, defendant took his shotgun from behind the seat, broke it, loaded it, closed it, aimed it, and shot Webb from the window of the truck. Defendant and another witness testified that Webb had assaulted the unarmed defendant with a knife approximately one week earlier.

In Holt v. State, supra, defendant testified, out of the presence of the jury, about five recent violent acts committed by deceased against third parties that had been told to him by five different persons. The trial judge ruled the five incidents incompetent and defendant assigned that ruling as error on appeal.

The Holt court correctly observed that in both Jackson v. State, 65 Tenn. 452 (1873), and Fitzhugh v. State, 81 Tenn. 258 (1884), similar testimony had been held incompetent, without discussion of the reasoning supporting the rule. Decisions of the appellate courts of Michigan, Montana, Indiana and Massachusetts were examined, wherein the view was expressed that defendant's state of mind and apprehension of danger in allegedly acting in self-defense are more accurately revealed to the jury by his knowledge of specific acts committed by deceased of which he had been informed, than by his knowledge of deceased's general reputation, and that such testimony by the defendant should be admitted as an exception to the general rule limiting character evidence to general reputation. The Holt court concluded as follows:

"This exception to the general rule restricting character evidence to general reputation is supported by reason. When a case narrows to the inquiry as to the degree of reasonableness of the apprehension in the mind of the defendant when he finds himself in a position in which he must instantly determine when, or whether or not, to strike, and when it is conceded that it is permissible for his judgment to be affected by the character of his antagonist for violence, there would seem to be no escape from the further concession that his judgment would be even more directly affected by knowledge of recent specific unrestrained violence. All men well know that the average mind responds more readily to knowledge of specific conduct than to impressions based on general reputation. To illustrate: An officer in performance of his duty approaches B to place him under arrest. Defying and resisting arrest, B threatens the officer. What more convincing basis of apprehension of danger from B could that officer possibly have than reliable information that two days before B had shot and killed another officer approaching him on a like mission, and that week before last he had committed a like offense, and that he was charged with having slain in brutal and violent fashion an inoffensive citizen? Is it possible that the court should decline to permit this officer, when on trial for shooting down B, to tell the jury that he was apprehensive of death or great bodily harm and that he fired as quickly as he did because this apprehension was intensified by knowledge of these specific recent offenses,...