State of Tennessee v. Curtis Burnside

A Knox County jury convicted the Defendant, Curtis Burnside, of thirty-three counts of theft, twelve counts of burglary, one count of criminal impersonation, and one count of simple possession of a controlled substance. The trial court imposed partial consecutive sentencing for an effective sentence of twenty-four years. On appeal, the Defendant contends that: (1) the evidence is insufficient to support his burglary convictions; (2) the State’s theory on the “aggregated counts” of the indictment was improper; and (3) the trial court sentenced him under an outdated “theft grading scheme.” After review, we affirm the Defendant’s convictions but reverse a number of his sentences. We conclude that the Defendant was sentenced on certain counts pursuant to an outdated version of the theft grading statute, Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-14-105(a), and should be resentenced on these counts pursuant to the updated version effective January 1, 2017. We affirm the convictions in all counts but remand to the trial court for resentencing consistent with this opinion.