State of Tennessee v. Cornelius Michael Hyde

The Defendant, Cornelius Michael Hyde, was convicted of aggravated child abuse of a child under seven years old and appealed as of right on numerous grounds, including the trial court's failure to instruct the jury on the lesser-included offenses of aggravated assault and assault. Judge Welles held that the trial court's failure to so charge the jury was error, but harmless under State v. Williams, 977 S.W.2d 101, 105 (Tenn. 1998). Judge Wedemeyer concurred, finding the error harmless beyond a reasonable doubt; Judge Tipton dissented, finding that the State failed to carry its burden of demonstrating that the trial court's error in not instructing the jury on the lesser-included offenses was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See State v. Cornelius Michael Hyde, No. E2000-00042-CC-R3-CD, 2000 WL 1877490, at *11 (Tenn. Crim. App., Knoxville, Dec. 28, 2000). Our supreme court subsequently granted the Defendant's application to appeal this case for the purpose of remanding it to us for reconsideration in light of that court's opinions in State v. Honeycutt, 54 S.W.3d 762 (Tenn. 2001) and State v. Ely, 48 S.W.3d 710 (Tenn. 2001). We now conclude that the trial court's error in failing to instruct the jury on the lesser-included offense of reckless aggravated assault is reversible error, and therefore remand this case to the trial court for a new trial.