State v. Morgan

271 S.W.3d 217, 2008 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 3, 2008 WL 65324
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee
DecidedJanuary 7, 2008
DocketE2006-00820-CCA-R3-CD
StatusPublished

This text of 271 S.W.3d 217 (State v. Morgan) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Morgan, 271 S.W.3d 217, 2008 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 3, 2008 WL 65324 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2008).

Opinion

OPINION

JERRY L. SMITH, J.,

delivered the opinion of the court,

in which JOSEPH M. TIPTON, P.J., and NORMA McGEE OGLE, J., joined.

Appellant, Alford Lee Morgan, threw a rock from an interstate overpass. This incident resulted in the death of a passenger in a vehicle traveling under the overpass. A jury convicted Appellant of first degree murder by a destructive device, reckless homicide, eight counts of reckless endangerment, two counts of aggravated assault, and one count of assault. Follow *219 ing the trial, the trial court merged Appellant’s conviction for reckless homicide into the conviction for first degree murder by destructive device. The trial court also merged the various aggravated assault and reckless endangerment convictions so that the remaining convictions were two convictions for aggravated assault and one conviction for reckless endangerment. The trial court sentenced Appellant to a life sentence for first degree murder, six years for each aggravated assault, and two years for reckless endangerment. Both the aggravated assault sentence and the reckless endangerment sentence were ordered to run consecutively to the life sentence and to each other. Appellant filed a timely notice of appeal. On appeal, Appellant argues that: (1) T.C.A. § 39-13-202(a)(3) is unconstitutionally vague; (2) the trial court erred in creating a definition for “destructive device” to include in the jury instructions; and (3) the tidal court erred in failing to instruct the jury on reckless aggravated assault as a lesser included offense of aggravated assault. After a thorough review of the record, we reverse and dismiss Appellant’s conviction for first degree murder by a destructive device. Therefore, we set aside his conviction for first degree murder, order the reinstatement of his conviction for reckless homicide, and affirm the remaining convictions.

FACTUAL BACKGROUND

Around midnight on May 24, 2004, Mr. Jeremy Kelley called Appellant and asked Appellant if he would like to go with Mr. Kelley, Mr. Matt Carter and Mr. James Wright to load some engine blocks. Appellant went to Mr. Kelley’s house. When everyone arrived, they drove to a shed where the engines were located. However, they did not load them because they determined that the engine blocks were too heavy and moving them would cause too much noise. They returned to Mr. Kelley’s residénce and smoked marijuana instead.

The young men decided to drive around. While they were driving around, Mr. Kelley opened the side door of the van in which they were riding and began hitting mailboxes with a metal asp. The asp broke on a concrete mailbox, and Mr. Kelley directed that they stop at a construction site. They collected rocks and bricks and began to throw them at mailboxes and parked vehicles. They drove to a convenience store and threw a brick through the window of the convenience store. They continued to drive through subdivisions and throw bricks and rocks at parked vehicles.

Mr. Kelley then suggested they go to a bridge. They drove to the Brushy Valley overpass over 1-75. Mr. Carter ran across the bridge with a large board and threw it at an eighteen wheeler. It made a loud noise and excited everyone. They drove off the bridge, but turned around and stopped again on the bridge. Appellant grabbed a rock and threw it at a vehicle as it drove under the overpass. Appellant listened to the vehicle to determine when to throw it in order to hit the vehicle.

The sound of the rock hitting the vehicle scared the young men. They drove off the bridge and turned around to drive back over the bridge. They saw the tractor-trailer and the vehicle stopped on the side of the interstate but drove away.

In May of 2004, Gregory Doekins was a truck driver for Knoxville Iron Ameri-Steel. Around 1:40 a.m. on the morning of May 24, 2004, Mr. Doekins was taking a load of rebar to Kentucky. As he passed under the Brushy Valley overpass on 1-75, Mr. Doekins saw something fall from the overpass and hit the top corner of his windshield on the driver’s side, then knock off the driver’s side rearview mirror. Mr. *220 Dockins drove up to the Racoon Valley exit and called the police. The police arrived within five minutes.

Mr. Christopher Grande, his wife, Melissa Grande, and his mother-in-law, Barbara Jean Weimer, were returning from a family member’s graduation in Virginia to their home on Racoon Valley Road. Around 1:40 a.m. on the morning of May 24, 2004, they approached the Brushy Valley overpass at 1-75. Suddenly, Mr. Grande heard what he thought was a gunshot. He looked over at his mother-in-law in the passenger seat and saw her head move from side to side. He saw blood and glass all over the passenger compartment of the vehicle. Mrs. Grande, who was sleeping in the backseat, woke up when Mr. Grande yelled out to his mother-in-law. Mrs. Grande reached forward and found her mother’s pulse in her neck. Mrs. Grande stated that her mother’s pulse was faint and urged Mr. Grande to pull over to the side of the road. He refused to pull over until they were further away from the bridge fearing more gunshots. He did not want his wife to see her mother’s face because it looked like a rubber mask. When Mr. Grande looked over to find the dog that had been riding on Mrs. Weimer’s lap, he saw a large rock in the passenger floorboard.

The Grandes pulled over to the side of the interstate and called 911. While Mr. Grande was on the telephone with the 911 operator, Mrs. Grande reported that she could no longer find her mother’s pulse. The 911 operator told Mr. Grande to try CPR. By this time, Officer Robert Cole with the Knox County Sheriffs Department had arrived. Mr. Grande turned to Officer Cole and repeated what the operator had said. Due to the severity of Ms. Weimer’s injuries, Officer Cole could not find a place to blow air into her mouth and thought that it looked like the victim’s face had been completely destroyed. An ambulance arrived, and the paramedics attempted to revive the victim for thirty minutes. The victim was then transported to the hospital. An officer drove Mrs. Grande to the hospital. Another officer drove Mr. Grande to the hospital to be with his wife after returning the Grandes’ dogs to their home. The victim was dead when she arrived at the hospital.

Officer Cole saw the rock on the passenger floorboard and notified dispatch that the incident had not been a shooting. He then drove up to Mr. Dockins’s truck and interviewed him. There was also a third report that night of a similar incident at the same overpass. The authorities collected a wooden board from the southbound lane of the interstate, as well as the rock and rock fragments from the Grandes’ vehicle.

On May 25, 2004, Mr. Wright spoke with the chief of the Norris Police Department. The chief called Lieutenant Michael Gris-som of the Knox County Sheriffs Department to tell him that Mr. Wright had been riding in a van involved in the offense. From this interview, the police determined the identity of additional suspects. One of these suspects was Appellant.

On June 22, 2004, the Knox County Grand Jury indicted Appellant with two counts of first degree murder for the death of Mrs. Weimer, under two alternate bases; four counts of attempted first degree murder concerning Mr. and Mrs.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
271 S.W.3d 217, 2008 Tenn. Crim. App. LEXIS 3, 2008 WL 65324, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-morgan-tenncrimapp-2008.