Tennessee Criminal Lawyer Blog

For a criminal defendant, an enhancement factor is something he or she wants to avoid if at all possible. Simply put, an enhancement factor is a factor that can be considered by the trial court in imposing a more severe sentence on the defendant than would otherwise be imposed in the absence of such a factor. For most offenses, Tennessee law presumes that the defendant will be sentenced at the minimum of the applicable sentencing range unless enhancement factors apply. Thus, avoiding enhancement factors is of critical importance in many critical trials.

The Tennessee Code sets out a list of enhancement factors the court may consider in imposing a sentence. When the court decides to use an enhancement factor to “enhance” a defendant’s sentence, the court must specifically state that it is applying the factor and set out how much weight it is placing on that factor and why. This enables the appellate court to review the use of the factor in determining if the sentence was appropriate.
One restriction that Tennessee law has placed upon the usage of enhancement factors is that an enhancement factor cannot be used to enhance a sentence if that factor is already an element of the offense. A good example comes from a case styled State v. Nolan that came before the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals recently. In this case, the defendant was convicted of aggravated assault, of which one element is “serious bodily injury.” In sentencing the defendant, the judge also applied the enhancement factor found in T.C.A. § 40-35-114(6) which states that a defendant’s sentence can be enhanced if the injuries inflicted on the victim were “particularly great.” The defendant contended that his sentence was excessive and the Court of Criminal Appeals examined the sentence. The Court ruled that the enhancement factor applied by the court was effectively equivalent to the “serious bodily injury” element of aggravated assault and that to apply the enhancement factor would essentially be equal to punishing the defendant twice for the same offense.

The moral of this story, however, is not that if you are going to commit an offense that involves serious bodily injury to go ahead and beat them up really good because no one can do anything about it. Rather, it is that defendants may be able to contest the application of enhancement factors in situations where they are not appropriate. An experienced criminal defense attorney can assist a great deal in such a matter.

Source: State v. Nolan, 35 TAM 9-29, 12/28/09, Knoxville, Tipton, 10 pages.