The torture and murder of a Memphis mother in the presence of her children was “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel,” the Tennessee Supreme Court said Monday in a ruling upholding the conviction and death sentence Clarence C. Nesbit received for the 1993 crime.
In a 3-1 decision, the court found that evidence presented during Nesbit’s trial was sufficient to support the death penalty. Writing for the majority, Justice Frank Drowota also rejected Nesbit’s argument that testimony by the victim’s mother concerning the impact of her death on the family should not have been allowed. Chief Justice Riley Anderson and Justice Janice Holder concurred in the decision, which affirmed a Court of Criminal Appeals ruling in the case.
“It is an affront to the civilized members of the human race to say that at sentencing in a capital case, a parade of witnesses may praise the background, character and good deeds of the defendant..., but nothing may be said that bears upon the character of, or the harm imposed, upon the victims,” Drowota wrote.
In his appeal, Nesbit raised numerous issues, which the Supreme Court limited to five. Oral arguments before the court were held March 4 in Dyersburg as part of the Supreme Court’s SCALES project for high school students.
“After hearing oral argument and carefully reviewing the record, we have determined that none of the assignments of error require reversal,” Drowota wrote.
Nesbit, 19 at the time of the crime, shot Miriam Cannon, 20, in the head with a .357 Magnum revolver while four of her five young children were in the apartment where the murder took place. A medical examiner testified that prior to the fatal shooting, the victim had been burned repeatedly and her feet had been bruised and scraped during a form of torture known as “falanga.” He said she would have suffered mental and physical pain and distress during the torture, which was inflicted over an extended period of time.
In a separate dissenting opinion, Justice Adolpho A. Birch, Jr. wrote that he viewed the victim impact evidence “in this case as protracted and, consequently, prone to be unfairly prejudicial.”
“Generally, victim impact evidence is unsettling because its use encourages the jury to quantify the value of the victim’s life and urges the finding that murder is more reprehensible if the victim is survived by a bereaved family than if the victim has no family at all,” he wrote.
In his dissent, Birch wrote that he draws “no conclusion regarding the penalty imposed,” but found that a jury should reconsider the penalty “under the correct sentencing guidelines.”