State of Tennessee, Appellant v. Brenda Anne Burns, Appellee

Summary

The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed the reversal of Brenda Burns's first-degree murder conviction and remanded for a new trial, holding that trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance under Strickland v. Washington and Baxter v. Rose by failing to investigate a TBI memorandum and present the testimony of Ruby Blankenship and Kathy Decker, who could have described a separate plot by Michael Spadafina and the victim's son Paul Frappolo to murder the victim. Given the disreputable, revenge-motivated testimony of the State's key accomplice and only scant corroboration, the Court found a reasonable possibility that the omitted evidence would have raised a reasonable doubt in the jurors' minds. To guide the retrial, the Court adopted a modified Model Penal Code three-part definition of lesser-included offenses and a two-step analysis for when such instructions are required, holding that facilitation of and solicitation to commit first-degree murder were lesser-included offenses of criminal responsibility for first-degree murder as indicted; failure to charge solicitation was error, while failure to charge facilitation was not. No separate opinions were filed; all five justices concurred.