The Tennessee Supreme Court has denied an appeal by death row inmate Nicholas Todd Sutton, sentenced to death for the 1985 stabbing death of another prisoner at the Morgan County Regional Correctional Facility. Sutton was serving a life sentence for three previous murders when he and a co-defendant killed Carl Estep, a convicted child molester, by stabbing him 38 times with a homemade knife, or “shank.”
Sutton raised nine issues in his post-conviction appeal, which were rejected by the Supreme Court. On direct appeal, the Supreme Court affirmed Sutton’s conviction and sentence in 1988. The trial court and Court of Criminal Appeals later denied his post-conviction appeal.
An inmate who testified at Sutton’s trial said Estep was dealing marijuana in the prison and had sold the defendants some “bad merchandise.” He testified that he witnessed the murder by Sutton and another inmate.
Jurors who sentenced Sutton to death found there were no mitigating circumstances sufficient to outweigh three aggravating circumstances, as defined by state law at the time of the conviction. The aggravating circumstances jurors found were that Sutton had a prior conviction of a violent felony; the murder was heinous, atrocious or cruel; and the crime was committed while Sutton was in a place of lawful confinement.