Tennessee Criminal Lawyer Blog

Twenty-one year-old Jeffrey Brian-Edward Wills of Mosheim, Tennessee is facing several charges after authorities say he intentionally ran the SUV of nineteen year-old Jackie Ricker of Rheatown off the road, causing Ms. Ricker to be killed in the wreck. Mr. Wills was reportedly driving at a high rate of speed when he intentionally hit the Ford Explorer driven by Ms. Ricker, causing her car to drive into an embankment. Ms. Ricker was killed in the crash and two of her passengers, 31-year-old Sammy Shanks of Greeneville and 29-year-old Nancy Wills of Rheatown were injured and taken to Johnson City Medical Center. The personal injury ramifications of this situation are discussed here.

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When most people think of the crime of kidnapping, they envision someone being abducted from their home and taken to some remote location and held for ransom. In the real world, however, kidnapping scenarios often don't play out that way and Tennessee law allows for kidnapping to be charged when the period of confinement is as short as a few seconds.

In Tennessee, kidnapping is defined as knowingly removing or confining another person unlawfully so as to interfere substantially with that person's liberty (this is the definition of the offense of false imprisonment) under circumstances that expose that person to substantial risk of bodily injury (this additional element is what turns false imprisonment into kidnapping). It is noteworthy then, that there is no duration requirement whatsoever and that Tennessee courts have not read one into the statute as of yet.

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Any parent knows that few things get the blood pumping like the sporting events of one’s children. Many a dispute takes place every year between parents or between a parent and a coach over issues such as kids being too rough, lack of playing time, etc. Unfortunately such disputes often turn physical and one or more of the adults makes a poor decision and ends up facing criminal charges. Such is the case with 43-year-old John Paul Gomoljack who was reportedly arrested on Tuesday for allegedly pushing and striking Heritage Middle School coach Lee Nachand in a dispute over his son’s playing time. At the time of the arrest, Gomoljack was apparently booked under the wrong name and did not notify authorities that the name was incorrect, according to this article. He has been charged with assault.

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Unless you are Santa Claus, people probably aren’t going to take kindly to finding you stuck in their chimney. In fact, doing so will probably earn you a host of criminal charges just as it has for twenty-two year-old William Hussey of Chapel Hill, North Carolina who was found stuck in a chimney in South Knoxville early last Friday morning. There is no indication of exactly why the man decided to try to go through the chimney at around midnight on Friday but he apparently got stuck and rescue workers had to use rope to hoist him to safety. They also found his vehicle in the driveway of the home with seven cans of gasoline sitting inside. There is no word of what his plans were for the gasoline. He is charged with public intoxication, vandalism, and aggravated trespassing. Hussey told officers that it was not his intention to hurt anyone and that he was having mental issues.

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Last month, twenty year-old Jacob Hurst of Tazewell, TN and his nineteen year-old female companion were arrested as suspects in connection with multiple burglaries that had recently taken place in Claiborne County after a routine traffic stop and ensuing vehicle search uncovered a significant amount of cash and other valuables that were believed to have been taken during the robberies. Apparently, a full-scale investigation was launched into the robberies after the evidence was uncovered during the stop and the authorities now believe that Mr. Hurst and his companion were responsible for the slew of robberies. The robberies are now considered “solved” according to reports.

Continue reading "Traffic Stop Results in Burglary Arrests" »

Social media is all the rage nowadays, and the website Facebook has quickly become one of the most popular websites in the world. The website is so popular, in fact, that many people are becoming addicted to it, feeling the need to check their Facebook at all hours of the day and night regardless of where they are. For an example of how devoted people are becoming to this website, look at the example provided by nineteen year-old Douglas Wilgo of Beverly, Massachusetts. Mr. Wilgo was allegedly in the process of burglarizing a Massachusetts apartment when the urge to check his Facebook overcame him. He promptly used the homeowner’s computer to log in to Facebook, took care of all pressing Facebook matters, and then left the apartment without signing out or logging off. Thus, when police arrived to investigate the burglary, they found the alleged suspect still signed into Facebook on the homeowner’s computer and had no trouble tracking Mr. Wilgo down from there. Making the arrest even easier was the fact that Mr. Wilgo was apparently walking a dog that he had taken from the apartment at the time of his arrest.

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A major theme underlying Tennessee’s criminal code is that it is designed to protect Tennesseans from harm, especially serious harm such as death or serious bodily injury. For example, Tennessee’s criminal code would be doing Tennesseans a disservice if it were to punish them with a criminal charge, such as assault, for taking an action that ordinarily may be a criminal act but in the instant case actually operates to protect someone from even greater harm. For example, it would ordinarily be a crime to shove someone out a window, but such an act may not be criminal if it was done in order to get that person out of a burning house. Thus, Tennessee law contains the doctrine of necessity in order to distinguish criminal acts from those helpful acts society wants to encourage.

Continue reading "The Defense of Necessity" »

An attempted software update by a third-party vendor went horribly wrong and has resulted in the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department losing over 1,300 dashboard camera videos that were taken from cameras mounted inside its police cruisers. While most of the lost footage would have depicted routine traffic stops, some footage of DUI stops was also lost, according to a Metro police spokesman. The loss of DUI footage will have a substantial impact on both the state and the defendant in cases affected by the lost video.

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On the heels of yesterday's blog article discussing the offense of custodial interference in Tennessee comes a possible real-life example of custodial interference pertaining to the taking of two Crossville children, 2 year-old Anna Shuey and 5 year-old Kylie Shuey, by their biological father, Richard Shuey, from the apparent custody of the childrens' grandmother. It should be noted that all of the facts surrounding this situation are not known and that this case is merely being analyzed in this blog as a possible case of custodial interference. Mr. Shuey is innocent of any and all crimes until his guilt is proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Continue reading "Endangered Child Alert Issued for Crossville Children" »

Few situations have the potential to spiral out of control like custody disputes. Very often, two parents are fighting over custody who genuinely believe that the best interest of the child dictates that the child lives with them at least a majority of the time. Also, custody disputes occasionally involve parents who are trying to gain custody of the child simply to inflict pain or sadness on the other parent. Whatever the cause, custody disputes have a tendency to get ugly, especially when a parent or relative decides to take matters into his or her own hands.

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Forty-three year old Steven Blaine Church of Greeneville pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court Thursday to distributing child pornography. He reportedly faces up to twenty years in prison, heavy fines, and a possible lifetime of supervised release. Church’s distribution of the illegal material was discovered by the FBI’s Innocent Images Project which is an initiative that the FBI started in 1995 to combat the proliferation of child pornography. That initiative has expanded recently to include undercover operations where FBI agents assume fictitious screen names and ages in order to lure sex predators and child pornography distributors into online relationships and gather evidence against them. Such undercover operations are becoming an increasingly prevalent source of sex offense charges nationwide.

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A 29 year-old Miami Beach woman was arrested on Monday for allegedly stealing over $4,000 worth of services from a Fort Lauderdale area Botox clinic. The woman, who was dubbed the “Botox Bandit,” (a nickname she reportedly adopted for herself because she liked it so well) because she had taken free services from several Florida services by walking out without paying or writing bad checks after receiving the services. The Botox Bandit was less-than-devastates upon being arrested, the source article says, as she reportedly asked to check her Facebook to see if her arrest had been publicized yet, was concerned about how her hair looked, and was reportedly disappointed that the media was not on-hand to capture her arrest.

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Vanessa Coleman, the 22-year old woman recently convicted on multiple counts in connection with the brutal Christian-Newsom murders that took place in Knoxville in 2007, was sentenced to 53 years in prison last Friday by Judge Richard Baumgartner who rejected the argument that Coleman was a “young innocent” who had been forced into criminal action by the other offenders, including her then-boyfriend Latalvis Cobbins. Baumgartner found that Coleman was not innocent with regard to the commission of the crime and had in fact participated willingly, citing Coleman’s decisions to form a relationship with Cobbins, move to Tennessee, and stay at the scene of the crime throughout the duration of the victims’ torture and killings as evidence that Coleman was a willing participant. The judge then declined to allow Coleman any more leniency than that he felt had already been granted by the jury in acquitting Coleman of a number of the charges against her at the close of the trial.

Continue reading "Judge in Christian-Newsom Murders Rejects “Young Innocent” Defense" »

The Knox County District Attorney’s office has decided not to prosecute 21 year-old Douglas Jordan, III for fatally shooting two burglars who were attempting to rob his home shortly before midnight on June 27 of this year. Jordan apparently came home and found the two men, Adam Pfeiffer, age 25, and Jimmy Cannon, age 39, still in his house in the midst of bagging up his possessions. According to Jordan, the men attacked him as soon as he walked in, but Jordan was able to retrieve a gun from his waistband and fatally wound both attackers. The Knox County district attorney’s office was considering whether to charge Jordan with homicide, but determined that he acted in self-defense and did not deserve to be so charged.

Continue reading "Knoxville Man Who Killed Two Burglars Will Not Face Charges" »

Warren Steed Jeffs, a “prophet” in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, had two convictions on charges of rape as an accomplice overturned last week due to erroneous jury instructions. Jeffs was accused and convicted based on allegations that he used his standing as a member of the Church to convince a fourteen year-old girl to marry her nineteen year-old cousin, thus making Jeffs an accomplice to statutory rape as defined by the law of most states. The Utah Supreme Court decided, however, that the jury instructions were in error because they viewed the existence of a “position of trust” from the viewpoint of the wrong individual and thus created a strong possibility that Jeffs was found guilty based on that erroneous interpretation. Details of the situation can be found here.

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