Tennessee Criminal Lawyer Blog

For most criminal defendants, avoiding jail time by any means possible is considered a "win" in their case. Fortunately, Tennesseans currently have many methods for doing just that available to them in the form of probationary sentences, judicial diversions, and the soon-to-be-extinct pretrial diversion that can be granted to a defendant by agreement of the prosecutor and the defendant's attorney. These types of alternative sentences usually allow a defendant to avoid serving any jail time by serving an extended probationary sentence, obeying a laundry list of conditions, and paying any requisite fines or court costs. Most defendants are able to follow the terms of their alternative sentences and can thus avoid jail times. Those who are not so able will find themselves subjected to a revocation hearing.

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Every Tennessean has no doubt been exposed in some way to a thrilling murder mystery or criminal caper that is solved through some use of DNA evidence. While the frequency with which DNA testing actually makes or breaks a criminal case is no doubt overblown, analysis of DNA evidence is an extremely useful tool that does prove pivotal in many cases. Recognizing this, the Tennessee legislature enacted the Post-Conviction DNA Analysis Act in 2001 that allows an individual who has been convicted of a crime access to obtain a DNA analysis of evidence found at the crime scene if certain conditions are met.

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It seems like a no-brainer. At first blush, there seems to be no reason to hire a criminal defense attorney to assist or represent you in your case if there are no criminal charges against you. What most criminal suspects don't realize, however, is that retaining an attorney extremely early on in the process could be a very wise investment which could end up saving the suspect a great deal of trouble in the long run.

Continue reading "Should I Wait Until I am Charged?" »

Given the need for fairness and the importance of avoiding the appearance of impropriety in Tennessee's judicial system, you might think that it would be a manifest injustice to criminal defendants if prosecuting officials and agencies were allowed, for any reason whatsoever, to select specific judges before which to try defendants rather than using the random, computerized system for judge selection implemented in most courts. According to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, you would be wrong.

Continue reading "Judge-Shopping" »

One of the most basic constitutional rights that individuals have under Tennessee law is to have the criminal laws spelled out in such a way that an individual can know what is or is not illegal in order to allow Tennesseans to obey the law. To that end, it is always significant when Tennessee courts adopt a new definition of a legal term or decide upon a definition of a term where none existed previously. Recently, the Tennessee Supreme Court adopted the ABA definition of what constitutes a "single criminal episode," finding that for offenses to constitute a single criminal episode, that the offenses must occur simultaneously or in close sequence, offenses must occur in same place or in closely situated places, and that proof of one offense necessarily involves proof of others. This is significant for Tennesseans primarily for the purpose of determining whether offenses should be consolidated at trial.

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One has to wonder what kind of country we live in when a man can't pay his medical bills without being arrested for it, but that is exactly what happened to a Utah man who tried to pay his $25.00 bill at a local hospital with twenty-five hundred pennies. Apparently the hospital counter was not conducive to the reception of twenty five hundred pennies and some pennies managed to spill over onto the floor, causing the hospital staff to become upset and call the authorities. The authorities, deciding that such an act of terrorism could not go unpunished, charged the man with disorderly conduct which carries a fine of 14,000 pennies.

Continue reading "Man Charged for Paying Bill with Pennies" »

Almost every teenager has at some point experienced the agony of trying to win over a girl's family. This is a daunting task for two reasons. First, there is a very good chance that no one in her family, especially her father, likes you to begin with. Second, at eighteen years-old there probably aren't many special attributes that you have that would assist with this process. Not to be outdone by the latter circumstance, an eighteen year-old man from Gorham decided to impress his girlfriend's family by showing them his six thousand square foot mansion on Canandaigua Lake. The only problem, as the girl's family soon found out when the mansion's owners showed up an hour after the family had arrived, was that the teen did not own the mansion and had instead used a key he found on the premises to access the home. He was arrested for burglary, giving a false statement to police, and sexual misconduct after the authorities learned that the girl was only fifteen years-old.

Continue reading "Man Busted for Inviting Family to Someone Else's Mansion" »

Tennesseans lost a little more constitutional protection recently when the Tennessee General Assembly enacted the "Exclusionary Rule Reform Act," which essentially adopts the Good Faith Exception to the search warrant requirement that has long existed under federal law but has been absent from Tennessee's criminal law landscape. Simply put, this exception allows defective, erroneous, or otherwise unconstitutional search warrants to satisfy the search warrant requirement of the state and federal constitutions as long as the mistake was made in "good faith" by the officer executing the search. From a practical standpoint, this exception will allow evidence that would previously have been deemed unconstitutionally seized to be allowed into court to be used against defendants.

Continue reading "Tennessee General Assembly Adopts "Good Faith" Exception" »