State of Tennessee, Appellee v. Michael Wayne Howell, Appellant

Summary

The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed Michael Wayne Howell's first-degree felony-murder conviction and death sentence for the 1987 close-range shooting of a Memphis convenience-store clerk during a robbery, rejecting every guilt-phase claim. The court held that co-defendant Mona Lisa Watson's Oklahoma preliminary-hearing testimony was properly admitted under the former-testimony exception (unavailability plus opportunity and similar motive to cross-examine), that the trial court's erroneous exclusion of Watson's recantation offered for impeachment violated confrontation rights but was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, and that other-crimes evidence from Oklahoma and Florida was properly admitted on identity and flight. Applying State v. Middlebrooks, the court invalidated the felony-murder aggravating circumstance as duplicative but held the jury's consideration of it harmless beyond a reasonable doubt given the overwhelming prior-violent-felony aggravator and meager mitigation, and it discharged the statutorily required arbitrariness and proportionality review. Chief Justice Reid, concurring separately, joined the result while criticizing Tennessee's death-penalty jurisprudence — its narrowing function, its use of harmless error, and its conclusory proportionality review; Justice Daughtrey concurred in the results only.