State v. Thomas

687 S.W.3d 223

STATE of Tennessee

v.Tony THOMAS and Laronda Turner

Supreme Court of Tennessee, AT JACKSON.

April 5, 2023 Session

FILED March 7, 2024

Appeal by Permission from the Court of Criminal Appeals, Criminal Court for Shelby County, No. C17-00608, 17-00382 J. Robert Carter, Jr., Judge

Harry E. Sayle III, Memphis, Tennessee, for the appellant, Tony Thomas.

Josie S. Holland, Memphis, Tennessee, for the appellant, Laronda Turner.

Jonathan Skrmetti, Attorney General and Reporter; Andrée Sophia Blumstein, Solicitor General; T. Austin Watkins, Senior Assistant Attorney General; Andrew C. Coulam, Senior Assistant Attorney General; and Samantha L. Simpson, Assistant Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

Jessica M. Van Dyke, Nashville, Tennessee, for the Amicus Curiae, The Tennessee Innocence Project.

OPINION

Jeffrey S. Bivins, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Holly Kirby, C.J., and Roger A Page, J., joined. Sharon G. Lee, J., filed a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. Sarah K. Campbell, J., filed a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part.

A jury convicted two defendants, Tony Thomas and Laronda Turner, of three counts of first-degree premeditated murder. Those convictions stem from a triple homicide that occurred in Memphis, Tennessee, in 2015. Another co-defendant, Demarco Hawkins, was also implicated in the killings. However, his trial was severed from the other defendants, and he testified against Mr. Thomas and Ms. Turner. After Mr. Thomas and Ms. Turner were convicted, they appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeals, raising five issues for review. The intermediate appellate court ruled unanimously on three of the issues, but one judge dissented on the other two. Mr. Thomas and Ms. Turner sought permission to appeal, and we accepted the appeal only as to the two issues on which the intermediate appellate court was divided. First, we agreed to consider whether the prosecution breached the requirements of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), by failing to produce statements made by Mr. Hawkins at proffer conferences, which were allegedly inconsistent with Mr. Hawkins’ formal statement to law enforcement, before trial. Second, we agreed to address whether the evidence was sufficient to support Ms. Turner’s murder convictions. Based on our review, we conclude that the State did not breach its obligations under Brady with regard to Mr. Thomas. Additionally, we determine that the evidence is insufficient to sustain Ms. Turner’s convictions because Mr. Hawkins’ testimony was not ad- equately corroborated.¹ As a result, we affirm the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals in part and reverse in part. Additionally, in this opinion, we abrogate Tennessee’s common law accomplice-corroboration rule. However, we apply that change on a prospective basis only, and, thus, it has no bearing on the outcome of this case.

I. Factual and Procedural Background²

This case arises from a triple homicide that took place at a duplex on 1503 Lake Grove Street (the "Duplex") in Memphis, Tennessee, during the early morning hours of September 26, 2015. Eventually, three co-defendants were indicted by a grand jury, with two of the co-defendants, Tony Thomas ("Mr. Thomas") and Laronda Turner ("Ms. Turner"), proceeding in a joint trial in 2019. The other co-defendant, Demarco Hawkins ("Mr. Hawkins"), had his case severed from that of Mr. Thomas and Ms. Turner and testified at their trial as part of the State’s proof. In this appeal, we address the case of Mr. Thomas and Ms. Turner (collectively, the "Defendants").

Terry Jennings ("Mr. Jennings") called 9-1-1 at 1:31 a.m. on September 26, 2015. Mr. Jennings, who lived next to the Duplex, had been sitting on his couch when he overheard a hostile conversation next door. Mr. Jennings heard one man utter the words "[d]on’t shoot me," to which another responded "[y]ou done messed up." A series of gunshots ensued. Mr. Jennings looked out his window and saw two men walking away from the Duplex. The two men walked to a maroon-colored car parked on the opposite side of the street. Once the car drove away, Mr. Jennings placed the 9-1-1 call. Mr. Jennings recognized one person leaving the Duplex as someone he had seen at that residence previously.³

Sergeant Brad Webb ("Sergeant Webb") of the Memphis Police Department was the initial case coordinator on the crime scene. Sergeant Webb described the actions his unit took at the crime scene:

We viewed the scene inside to see if there—what kind of evidence would be there. [We] [d]irected other members of the homicide office—we started doing a neighborhood canvas, which at that time of morning there wasn’t a lot of people that we could talk to. [We] [h]ad Crime Scene come to the scene and did some review of the evidence there and asked them to collect certain items.

Sergeant Webb did not recall whether he had entered the Duplex with the other officers that morning.

Detective Nick Dandridge ("Detective Dandridge") replaced Sergeant Webb as case coordinator shortly after the investigation started. According to Detective Dandridge, officers entered the Duplex through a side door on the south side of the Duplex because a large body lying near the front door prevented them from using that entrance. Upon entering, the officers found Anthony Isom’s ("Antho- ny")⁴ body wedged between the side of a bed and the front door. Detective Dandridge testified that Anthony had been shot multiple times. Officers would go on to find two more deceased individuals in the Duplex. They found Chastity Spring-field ("Ms. Springfield") with "one foot out the window … hanging lifeless[ly] with several gunshot wounds." Officers believed that Ms. Springfield had tried to escape the Duplex when she first heard shots by pushing an air conditioner out of the window so that she could exit the house. However, according to Detective Dandridge, she was "ambushed from the back" and "shot multiple times," killing her before she could escape. After discovering Ms. Springfield’s body, officers found Michael Glover’s ("Mr. Glover") body lying in a closet.

Detective Dandridge further testified that, inside the Duplex, officers uncovered a "gang journal" and several firearms.⁵ A photograph taken inside the Duplex after the killings shows the words "RiP Ralph Sep[.] 2, 2015" written on an interior wall of the duplex.⁶ Another photograph shows a bill from Memphis Light, Gas and Water, addressed to a man named James Brannon, attached to a wall inside the Duplex with a thumb tack.⁷ Across the street from the Duplex, officers found a broken glass jar and some small baggies of marijuana near the street curb where the car had been parked.

Shortly after the killings occurred, Mr. Jennings went to the police station and discussed what he had witnessed with Detective Dandridge. At that meeting officers took a formal, written statement from Mr. Jennings, although Mr. Jennings stated at trial that he only recognized "some of" the statement, Nevertheless, Mr. Jennings confirmed that he recognized the signature on the last page of the statement and the initials at the bottom of each page as his own. The statement described one assailant as a "light-skinned" man, standing about five-feet nine-inches tall and "slim," and described the other assailant as "real dark, [five-feet eight-inches tall], not fat but a little heavy, [with a] round face … no shirt on … he might have had dreads."⁸ The police report further indicated that Mr. Jennings described the two men as "around [age] 23, under [age] 30."⁹

At the police station, Mr. Jennings was shown two photograph lineups of males fitting Mr. Jennings’ description of the assailants.¹⁰ One of the photographs included in the first lineup was of Mr. Thomas, whom Mr. Jennings did not identify when he was shown the pictures. That photograph lineup, identified as spread "A," was later admitted into evidence at trial. Detective Dandridge testified that another lineup admitted into evidence at trial, labeled as spread "B," was also shown to Mr. Jennings at the police station. Mr. Jennings testified that he did not identify either of the men leaving the Duplex in the photographic lineups, but claimed that he believed he had a clear enough view of the men that he would have been able to identify them had they been pictured in the lineups. Although the two men were walking away from Mr. Jennings when he looked out his window, Mr. Jennings testified that he "could see the side of their faces" and was aided by "a light from the light pole" in front of his house.

Detective Dandridge testified that officers used surveillance footage near the Duplex to identify a maroon-colored car leaving Lake Grove Street around the time the 9-1-1 call was placed. Officers later determined that Mr. Thomas and Ms. Turner were known to drive a large, maroon-colored car of an older model, closely matching the characteristics of the car seen in the surveillance footage and identified through a still shot of the footage. Officers brought Mr. Thomas into the police station on September 28, 2015, to discuss the situation. Mr. Thomas was shown the still shot Image of the car and identified the car as belonging to himself and Ms. Turner, circling the vehicle and writing "[t]his is our car," on the image. Ms. Turner also recognized the car in the still shot image, writing "[t]his is my car. I have the same car," on the copy of the image presented to her. Detective Dandridge testified that he did not tell Mr. Thomas or Ms. Turner what date and time the photo was taken before asking if they could identify the car. Officers ultimately obtained a warrant and searched the car, a 1997 Mercury Grand Marquis. Paperwork and latex gloves were the only items found by officers in the car upon the search.

Consistent with the "gang journal"¹¹ uncovered by police at Anthony’s residence following the killings, trial...