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State v. Rogers5/24/1999
AFFIRMED.
The sole issue in this appeal is whether the common law year-and-a-day rule is currently a viable principle of criminal law in Tennessee. The defendant argued in the Court of Criminal Appeals that his conviction for second degree murder should be set aside because the victim's death did not occur within a year and one day of the fatal stab wounds. The Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the defendant's argument and affirmed his conviction upon finding that the common law year-and-a-day rule was abolished by the Criminal Sentencing Reform Act of 1989. For the reasons that follow, we hold that the rule was not abolished by the 1989 Criminal Sentencing Reform Act. However, the justifications originally supporting recognition of the rule have been eroded by advances in medical science, improved trial procedure, and sentencing reforms. Therefore, we hereby abolish the now obsolete common law year-and-a-day rule. Because the rule has been judicially abrogated by almost every court which has recently considered the issue, we conclude that our decision does not constitute an unforseeable judicial enlargement of a criminal statute; therefore, retrospective application of this decision is not barred by the ex post facto clauses of the state and federal constitutions. Accordingly, we affirm, on the separate grounds stated, the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals which upheld the defendant's conviction of second degree murder.
BACKGROUND
The facts relevant to the legal issue in this appeal are few and undisputed. On May 6, 1994, the defendant, Wilbert K. Rogers, stabbed the victim, James Bowdery, with a butcher knife. One of the stab wounds penetrated the victim's heart. Bowdery was treated at the Regional Medical Center in Memphis, and during a procedure to repair the damage to his heart, he went into cardiac arrest. Bowdery was resuscitated, but he had developed cerebral hypoxia, a condition which results from a loss of oxygen to the brain. Bowdery's higher brain functions had ceased, and he remained in a comatose state until August 7, 1995, when he died from a kidney infection, a common complication experienced by comatose patients. Approximately fifteen months had passed from May 6, 1994, the day the defendant stabbed Bowdery, to August 7, 1995, the day Bowdery died. However, according to the undisputed testimony of Dr. Jerry T. Francisco, a pathologist and the medical examiner for Shelby County, the victim's death was caused by cerebral hypoxia "secondary to a stab wound to the heart."
Based upon this proof, the jury found the defendant guilty of second degree murder. Relying upon the common law year-and-a-day rule, the defendant asserted in the Court of Criminal Appeals that his conviction should be modified to criminal attempt to commit murder because the victim's death had occurred more than a year and one day after the stabbing incident. The intermediate court rejected the defendant's argument and held that the Criminal Sentencing Reform Act of 1989 abolished common law defenses including the year-and-a-day rule. Because the Criminal Sentencing Reform Act became effective in 1989, approximately five years before the defendant committed this offense, the intermediate court also rejected the defendant's contention that abolition of the rule violates the ex post facto prohibitions of the state and federal constitutions. Thereafter, we granted the defendant's application for permission to appeal and now affirm, on different grounds, the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals.
YEAR-AND-A-DAY RULE
In this appeal, we are called upon to consider, for the first time since 1907, the common law year-and-a-day rule and to de
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