State of Tennessee, Appellee v. Jonathan Vaughn Evans, Defendant-Appellant

Summary

The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed Jonathan Vaughn Evans's conviction of first-degree felony murder for the robbery-murder of grocery clerk Mary Slover, holding the circumstantial evidence—his presence at the market minutes before the shooting, ballistics matching his landlady's missing .25 caliber pistol to the fatal bullet, and his possession of the stolen bank bag, telephone receiver, and cash—sufficient under Jackson v. Virginia. The Court rejected his challenges to the denial of a change of venue, the denial of a state-funded investigator, the venire's racial composition, the admission of photographs and a seven-year-old witness's testimony, the trial judge's reprimand and interruptions, and an alleged Brady violation, and it upheld the death penalty statute against facial and discriminatory-application attacks. A three-justice majority, following State v. Middlebrooks, held that aggravating circumstance (i)(7) unconstitutionally duplicates the elements of felony murder under the Eighth Amendment and Article I, Section 16 of the Tennessee Constitution, and therefore reversed the sentence of death and remanded for a new sentencing hearing at which the State may again seek death. Justice Drowota, writing for the Court, stated that he and Justice O'Brien dissent from that sentencing result and would have affirmed both the conviction and the death sentence.