Nashville, Tenn. – The Tennessee Supreme Court has affirmed the convictions of Leonard Edward Smith for the 1985 murders of two Sullivan County grocery store workers, John Pierce and Novella Webb. The Court also affirmed the ruling of the Court of Criminal Appeals vacating Smith’s death sentence for the Webb murder and remanded the case to the trial court for a new sentencing hearing.
The Smith case comes with a complex history as the appellate courts have previously remanded the case to the trial court on two separate occasions.
In the unanimous opinion authored by Justice Sharon G. Lee, the Court found that Smith’s attorneys failed to provide effective assistance by not adequately pursuing recusal of the judge during Smith’s resentencing hearing. Judge Lynn Brown, who served as an assistant district attorney before taking the bench, prosecuted other charges against Smith while the defendant was on trial for the Webb murder and also communicated with the prosecuting attorney in the Webb case.
The Supreme Court agreed with the Court of Criminal Appeals’ ruling to remand the case for a new sentencing hearing, finding that Smith was denied his due process right to a fair trial under the circumstances and that “the potential injury to the judicial process due to the appearance of impropriety and unfair lack of impartiality by a judge imposing a death sentence is too great to allow the sentence to stand.”
The Court also granted Smith a new hearing to determine whether he was intellectually disabled at the time of the Webb murder. Under Tennessee law, a person who is intellectually disabled cannot be executed.
In order for a person to be found to be intellectually disabled, Tennessee statute requires a functional intelligence quotient (IQ) of 70 or below and deficits in adaptive behavior. Additionally, the intellectual disability must have been manifested before the age of 18.
The Court held that the “post-conviction court misapplied the applicable legal standard” by not taking the standard margin of error and other scientific evidence into account when determining Smith’s functional IQ.
The Supreme Court rejected Smith’s post-conviction petition for a new trial in the Pierce case due to the statute of limitations. The Court also affirmed Smith’s conviction in the Webb murder because Smith failed to demonstrate that he suffered prejudice from his counsel’s inadequate questioning of potential jurors.
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