State of Tennessee, Appellee v. David Carl Duncan, Appellant

Summary

The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed David Carl Duncan's first-degree murder conviction and death sentence, along with consecutive life sentences for aggravated rape and armed robbery, holding the circumstantial evidence sufficient, the challenged evidentiary rulings proper or harmless, and the death sentence neither arbitrary nor disproportionate where the jury found the murder especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel and committed during rape and robbery with no mitigating circumstances. The court rejected the argument that the capital sentencing statute unconstitutionally burdens the right to jury trial, because Tennessee law permits a trial judge to impose death after a guilty plea or jury waiver, distinguishing contrary decisions from other jurisdictions. It upheld the for-cause exclusion of a prospective juror under the governing federal standard and found no prejudicial error in the pre-existing practice of not defining the heinous-atrocious-cruel aggravator terms. Justice Brock concurred in the affirmance of the convictions but dissented from imposition of the death penalty for the reasons expressed in his prior dissent in the Dicks litigation.