In 2012, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that a defendant who pleads guilty to a crime can appeal the judgment if exculpatory evidence is discovered later.
Four years later, the same court changed its mind.
What occurred in the intervening four years to necessitate such a pivot by the state’s highest court? Nothing, according to Justice Sharon G. Lee.
. . . .
“Since 2014, the Tennessee Supreme Court has aggressively sought to federalize Tennessee law by striking down state-specific protections that prior iterations of the court had developed under Tennessee’s state constitution and civil rules,” says Daniel Horwitz, a Nashville attorney and the editor of ScotBlog, a website devoted to the state Supreme Court. “A few significant state-level protections still remain. However, given that prior precedent — no matter how recent or firmly established — has had virtually no influence on the Tennessee Supreme Court’s decisions to overturn its previous rulings, it stands to reason that these protections are vulnerable to being abandoned as well.”
It’s that time of year again, and the February 2017 bar exam results are out. 378 law school graduates took the February 2017 exam, which had an overall passage rate of 47%. Applicants from Tennessee’s law schools[1] fared as follows:
Vanderbilt remained on top with a 100% passage rate for both first-time takers and re-takers. By contrast, Nashville School of Law brought up the rear again with an overall passage rate of just 36% (a respectable 55% of NSL’s first-time takers passed the exam, but 76% of NSL’s re-takers failed it). Belmont, Memphis, and UT boasted overall passage rates of 58%, 54%, and 50%, respectively. Complete results from the February 2017 exam appear below.
In the weeks leading up to a scheduled hearing on her petition for resentencing, Ms. Karen Howell—one of the co-defendants who pleaded guilty to the Lillelid murders—along with her co-defendant, Ms. Natasha Cornett, released a pair of lengthy, self-serving statements that several media outlets have since published unedited and without verification. The Greene County District Attorney’s Office and its agents have since responded to those statements with statements to the media of their own.
Jason Bryant, the then-14-year-old child who has also filed a petition for resentencing on account of his being a juvenile at the time of his offense, has not sought to comment publicly on the case. However, in response to the recent, prejudicial coverage relating to his upcoming proceedings, Daniel Horwitz, lead counsel for Jason Bryant, has released the following statement on Mr. Bryant’s behalf:
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My heart breaks for the Lillelid family, which suffered what can only be described as a horrific and unspeakable tragedy. It is, however, highly inappropriate for Karen Howell, Natasha Cornett, the Greene County District Attorney’s Office, or any other party involved in this case to attempt to litigate disputed legal issues through the media. Those attempts have seriously prejudiced Jason Bryant’s right to a fair proceeding, and they will likely necessitate a change of venue when his hearing takes place.
Although Rule 3.6(a) of the Rules of Professional Conduct strongly counsels against public comment in cases like this, Rule 3.6(c) includes an exception permitting attorneys to make public statements when it becomes necessary to correct a misimpression in the public record due to “the substantial undue prejudicial effect of recent publicity not initiated by the lawyer or the lawyer’s client.” Consequently, the purpose of this statement is to correct three such misimpressions.
First, Mr. Bryant did not shoot anyone, and no jury has ever determined that he did.
Second, former District Attorney General Berkeley Bell’s statement that “the co-defendants blamed the shooting on Bryant because he was the youngest of the group” is accurate, as is his statement that “Bryant wasn’t part of the group.” In contrast, Karen Howell’s and Natasha Cornett’s self-serving statements assigning Jason Bryant the blame for the Lillelids’ murders are not. When Jason Bryant’s adult co-defendants discovered that Mr. Bryant—who was the only outsider to the otherwise closely-knit group, and who was also the youngest member of the group by far—was actually a juvenile who had pretended to be significantly older than he was, one of his adult co-defendants instructed him that he had to take responsibility for the Lillelids’ slayings. That individual then pointed a gun at Mr. Bryant, shot him in the hand, and threatened to kill him if he did not. Mr. Bryant still has visible scars from this event where the bullet went through his hand and entered his leg.
Third, Mr. Bryant was threatened and coerced into joining the group plea bargain to life without the possibility of parole against his will and against his clear legal interests. Jason Bryant was just a fourteen-year-old child at the time of the Lillelids’ murders, and thus, he was not eligible for the death penalty on account of his being a juvenile. As such, Mr. Bryant gained nothing from accepting a group plea bargain to a life sentence without the possibility of parole, which served only to spare his adult co-defendants the death penalty.
It is our position that these facts and the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Eighth Amendment jurisprudence establishing that it is nearly categorically unconstitutional to sentence juveniles to life without the possibility of parole entitle Mr. Bryant to a new sentencing hearing. These issues, however, must be decided in a court of law, rather than in the court of public opinion. Accordingly, this will be Mr. Bryant’s first and only public statement on this case. We ask that the parties and the media respect the judicial process and refrain from further prejudicing Mr. Bryant’s right to a fair proceeding going forward.
