State of Tennessee, Plaintiff-Appellee v. Stephen Leon Williams, Defendant-Appellant

Summary

The court affirmed the defendant's first-degree murder conviction but set aside the death sentence and remanded for a new penalty hearing. It held that the evidence supported the robbery-related aggravating circumstance, but did not support the torture-or-depravity aggravator when co-defendant evidence barred by the confrontation rule was excluded and the postmortem conduct occurred too long after the killing. The penalty-phase instructions also failed to define the relevant felonies and aggravating terms sufficiently to guide the jury's discretion.