APPELLATE COURT OPINIONS

The defendant, Antonio Dewayne Carpenter, was indicted for premeditated murder, felony murder, especially aggravated kidnapping, and especially aggravated robbery. The state filed notice seeking the death penalty. The defendant was convicted on each count of the indictment and the trial court merged the felony murder conviction with the premeditated murder conviction. At the conclusion of the penalty phase of the trial, the jury imposed a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. The trial court ordered concurrent twenty-year sentences for especially aggravated kidnapping and especially aggravated robbery. All of these sentences were ordered to be served consecutively to three life sentences for federal convictions stemming from the same incident. In this appeal of right, the defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence and argues that the dual sovereignty doctrine, which permits successive federal and state prosecutions for the same acts, should be abandoned. The judgments are affirmed.

The Defendant, Harold D. Arnold, pled guilty to driving under the influence of an intoxicant and failure to maintain an accurate log book after the trial court denied his motion to suppress the results of a breath analysis test. The Defendant properly reserved a certified question of law for this Court to determine whether the trial court erred in denying the Defendant's motion to suppress. We reverse the judgment of the trial court.

On October 5, 1998, the defendant, Barry Dunham, pled guilty in the Macon County Criminal Court to one count of second degree murder and received a sentence of twenty-five years incarceration in the Tennessee Department of Correction. The defendant filed for post-conviction relief which was granted by the post-conviction court. The State now appeals. Upon review of the record and the parties' briefs, we affirm the judgment of the post-conviction court and remand for new trial.

The defendant, Yevette Somerville, was convicted of theft of property valued under $500, a Class A misdemeanor, and was sentenced to eleven months, twenty-nine days in the county jail. As her sole issue on appeal, the defendant argues that the State’s failure to inquire about and preserve potentially exculpatory evidence violated her due process rights under the United States and Tennessee Constitutions. Having reviewed the entire record, we conclude that the loss of the evidence did not unfairly prejudice the defendant’s case. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The defendant was convicted of first degree premeditated murder, first degree felony murder, and especially aggravated robbery, with the murder convictions merged into a single conviction for first degree murder following the jury's verdict. The jury sentenced him to life imprisonment on the murder conviction, and the trial court sentenced him to twenty-two years on the especially aggravated robbery conviction, to be served concurrently to the life sentence. Following the denial of his motion for a new trial, the defendant filed a timely appeal to this court, raising four issues: (1) whether the evidence was sufficient to support his convictions; (2) whether the trial court erred in allowing testimony about a statement of denial he made to police; (3) whether the trial court erred in allowing a photograph of the victim's body to be introduced into evidence; and (4) whether the jury should have been instructed that the State had taken the position, in a dismissed conspiracy indictment, that the defendant's accomplice was the shooter. After a careful review, we affirm the judgment of the trial court but remand for entry of corrected judgments.