State of Tennessee v. Johnny Maxwell

A Shelby County Criminal Court jury convicted the defendant, Johnny Maxwell, of five counts of especially aggravated kidnapping, a Class A felony, and one count of aggravated robbery, a Class B felony. The trial court sentenced the defendant as a Range I, standard offender to concurrent terms of twenty-four years for each especially aggravated kidnapping conviction, to be served at one hundred percent, and to eleven years for the aggravated robbery conviction, to be served consecutively to the other sentences for an effective sentence of thirty-five years. On appeal, the defendant contends that (1) his especially aggravated kidnapping convictions cannot stand under State v. Anthony, 817 S.W.2d 299 (Tenn. 1991), because the victims’ detention was incidental to the aggravated robbery; (2) the trial court improperly commented on the evidence during the jury instructions; and (3) his sentences are improper in light of Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. __, 124 S. Ct. 2531 (2004). We affirm the judgments of the trial court.