State v. Seagroves

691 S.W.2d 537, 1985 Tenn. LEXIS 597
CourtTennessee Supreme Court
DecidedMay 28, 1985
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 691 S.W.2d 537 (State v. Seagroves) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Tennessee Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Seagroves, 691 S.W.2d 537, 1985 Tenn. LEXIS 597 (Tenn. 1985).

Opinion

OPINION

FONES, Justice.

We granted this Rule 11 application for permission to appeal to determine whether the double jeopardy clauses of the state and federal constitutions precluded retrial on lesser included offenses after the jury acquitted defendant of armed robbery but deadlocked as to all lesser included offenses.

Seagroves was indicted with a co-defendant, Rollins, for armed robbery.1 The proof at the second trial reveals that sometime around 9:50 p.m. on October 27, 1981, Seagroves, Rollins, and Chaffee, an accomplice who confessed to the robbery and testified for the State, entered the garage at the residence of Mitchell Hobbs. When Hobbs arrived home shortly after 10:00 p.m., he went into the garage to change a light bulb that had been out for several nights. As Hobbs reached to change the bulb, he heard a noise and felt a gun against his throat. Hobbs was confronted by three masked assailants who covered his face and wrestled him to the floor, taping his arms and legs. The robbers then removed approximately $700 in cash from Hobbs’s wallet and fled in a vehicle driven by Seagroves. Chaffee testified that he, Seagroves and Rollins waited for Hobbs in the darkened garage and robbed him. He further testified that Seagroves carried a .38 caliber pistol and was wearing a red and blue toboggan which Seagroves threw out of a car window as the three men drove around the area. This mask, allegedly worn by Seagroves during the commission of the robbery, was discovered along an area road the day after the robbery and was introduced at trial. Hair samples from the toboggan matched hairs removed from Seagroves.

Seagroves testified and denied any participation in the robbery. He admitted that he had been with Rollins and Chaffee earlier on the night of the robbery but insisted that he and Rollins parted with Chaffee and went to McMinnville before the time of the robbery. He testified that he was taking Valium and drinking beer and that Valium affected his memory. That testimony was apparently to account for some discrepancies in prior statements about where they went and what they did in McMinn-ville.

At the first trial, the jury acquitted Seag-roves of armed robbery but was unable to reach a verdict on the lesser included offenses. Defendant’s attorney had requested that the court charge “the full scale of [539]*539possible included offenses under armed robbery,” despite the caveat by the trial judge that “actually under this proof this appears it’s armed robbery or ... nothing.” Defense counsel acknowledged that charging lesser included offenses in these circumstances could work to defendant’s disadvantage, stating, “That’s a risk you have to run.” Over opposition by the State as to a charge on petit larceny, the trial judge then agreed to “give the full scale charge.”

After deliberating for approximately fifteen minutes, the jury returned to the courtroom and reported that they found defendants not guilty of armed robbery, but they were unable to agree on a verdict on the lesser charge of assault with intent to commit armed robbery. The jury was instructed to deliberate further, and, upon its return approximately ninety minutes later, reported that they were still “hopelessly deadlocked” on the charge of assault with intent to commit robbery. Thereupon the trial judge declared a mistrial, and there is no indication that defense counsel objected to the mistrial or any other aspect of the jury’s decision.

At the second trial, the judge specifically instructed the jury that they could not find defendants guilty of armed robbery because defendants had previously been acquitted on that charge. The jury found defendants guilty of assault with intent to commit armed robbery, and punishment was fixed at imprisonment in the state penitentiary for not less than five years nor more than twenty-one years.

The majority of the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the conviction and dismissed the indictment, holding that the former jeopardy provisions of the state and federal constitutions were violated.

The majority’s position was based primarily upon Brittain v. State, 26 Tenn. 117 (1846). Brittain is clearly distinguishable from the case at bar. There was no issue of double jeopardy as defendant was not tried upon the offense charged in the indictment, assault with intent to commit murder in the first degree. The entire factual recitation of what occurred in that case is as follows:

The plaintiff in error was indicted at the March term, 1846, of the Williamson circuit court for an assault with intent to commit murder in the first degree. At the July term of the court the attorney general, with the assent of the court, entered a nolle prosequi as to the felony; and defendant thereupon submitted to the court, and was fined $50, and adjudged to undergo imprisonment for sixty days; from which judgment this appeal is prosecuted. 26 Tenn. at 117-118.

The Court observed, in the course of its opinion, that the attorney general, with the assent of the court, could have stricken from the indictment the words that charged malice and the felony, “leaving only such as would charge the inferior offense ... ”; and also that if defendant had gone to trial on the indictment, that the jury could have acquitted him of the felony charged and “found him guilty of an assault only.” Later the Court said, “[t]his man’s submission was doubtless made with a distinct understanding of the offence [sic] he intended to confess.” 26 Tenn. at 118.

Thus, it appears that after the State voluntarily dismissed the indictment containing the single charge of assault with intent to commit murder in the first degree, the defendant pled guilty to the lesser offense of assault for which the trial judge fined and imprisoned him. The Court reasoned that the charge of the lesser offense, “necessarily goes with” the greater offense, not because the words of the indictment charge a lesser offense, but because in legal contemplation the lesser offense is charged in an indictment for a greater offense; that the charge constituted by the words of the indictment could not be withdrawn and, “the legal idea of the inferior offense retained upon which to try the defendant.”

The Brittain court recognized that it was dismissing the defendant on a technicality and justified it with the comment that, “in seeking to get rid of technical forms that have no tendency to the effectu-[540]*540ation of justice, we must be careful that we do not go on [to] the other extreme.” 26 Tenn. at 118. Brittain has no bearing upon the issue in the instant case.

In the‘case at bar, the indictment had not been dismissed and in legal contemplation the lesser included offenses remain pending because a hung jury created a manifest necessity that the trial judge declare a mistrial. Defendant does not, and indeed could not, successfully question that a manifest necessity existed for the declaration of a mistrial.

It is well-settled that dismissal of a jury that cannot agree upon a verdict does not operate as an acquittal of the defendant, and his subsequent retrial does not, therefore, constitute double jeopardy. Richardson v. United States, - U.S. -, 104 S.Ct. 3081, 82 L.Ed.2d 242 (1984); State v. Witt, 572 S.W.2d 913 (Tenn.1978); State v. Malouf, 199 Tenn. 496, 287 S.W.2d 79 (1956).

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Bluebook (online)
691 S.W.2d 537, 1985 Tenn. LEXIS 597, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-seagroves-tenn-1985.