The death sentence Memphis jurors imposed on a man who raped and murdered his 13-year-old stepdaughter after luring her into a wooded area has been upheld by the Tennessee Supreme Court.
Charles Rice was sentenced to death for the June 18, 2000, stabbing murder of Emily Branch. The girl, whose body was found a week later, had suffered 16 stab wounds, including defensive wounds, medical experts testified at Rice’s trial. Other evidence, including the position of her clothing, indicated the girl had been raped.
“After considering the entire record in this case we conclude that the defendant is not entitled to relief on any of the issues raised,” Chief Justice William M. Barker wrote in the majority opinion filed Wednesday.
He was joined by Justices E. Riley Anderson, Janice M. Holder and Cornelia A. Clark in affirming a Court of Criminal Appeals decision in the case. The courts’ decisions stemmed from Rice’s automatic appeal under state law.
In a separate concurring and dissenting opinion, Justice Adolpho A. Birch, Jr., said he agreed that Rice’s convictions should be affirmed, but “as to the sentence of death, however, I respectfully dissent.”
Birch disagreed with the method the court used in this and other capital cases to conduct statutorily mandated “proportionality review.” The court is required to compare each death penalty case to others involving similar defendants and crimes. In his dissent, Birch wrote that the method adopted by the court is “inadequate to shield defendants from the arbitrary and disproportionate imposition of the death penalty.”
After reviewing similar capital cases and defendants, the majority determined that Rice’s sentence of death “was not applied arbitrarily and was not excessive or disproportionate when compared to similar cases in which the same penalty was imposed,” Barker wrote.
Rice was married to his victim’s mother, Tracie Anderson, at the time of the crime. The couple had separated 12 days earlier and Anderson moved out of Rice’s home.
“Prior to her leaving, the defendant told her that if she left him, ‘it will hurt you more than it hurts me,’” Barker wrote.
On the morning she was killed, Emily and three other girls were out walking and went to the defendant’s house where he was living with his father. After the other girls left, Emily and the defendant were seen walking together. When she didn’t return home, her father, Steven Branch, notified police and began searching for his daughter, who had been living with him.
When Rice was brought in for questioning, he first denied going into the woods with Emily even after being told witnesses had seen them. He later changed his story and blamed the killing on another man, but acknowledged he had lured Emily to the area where she was stabbed to death and knew she would be killed.
Rice, 35 when he committed the crime, was charged with the murder and convicted. During the sentencing phase of Rice’s trial, Emily’s father testified that after his daughter’s murder he often spent nights sitting in his living room and looking at her picture. He said she wanted to be a model and was saving money to attend modeling school.
Mitigating evidence presented by the defense included testimony that several close relatives had died, that Rice had performed poorly in school and had an IQ of 79. But jurors found that aggravating circumstances, as defined by state law, outweighed the mitigating circumstances.
Among issues raised in his appeal, and rejected by the court, was whether evidence was sufficient to prove he raped and murdered the victim.
“By his own admission, the defendant lured the victim into the woods by promising to show her an apple tree but did not intend for her to leave the woods alive,” Barker wrote. “Once in the woods, the victim was stabbed 16 times and left to die. When the defendant returned to the woods with the police, he was able to lead the police directly to the location where the victim’s body had been found … Based on all the evidence, clearly a rational trier of fact could have found that the defendant was the perpetrator of the crime.”
The court considered seven issues raised by Rice and rejected them or found they were harmless errors by the trial court. The Supreme Court also affirmed the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals on other issues in Rice’s appeal.
“The sentence of death shall be carried out as provided by law on the twenty-eighth day of June, 2006, unless otherwise ordered by this Court or other proper authority,” Barker wrote.
Rice has state and federal appeals remaining in his case.