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State v. Haywood12/11/1998
The defendant, Carlos D. Haywood, was convicted in a jury trial in the Shelby County Criminal Court of felony murder and attempt to commit especially aggravated robbery. After a bifurcated trial in which the state sought a life sentence without the possibility of parole, the jury found that the aggravating circumstance did not outweigh the mitigating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt and sentenced the defendant to life with the possibility of parole. The trial court sentenced the defendant to a consecutive sentence of twelve years as a Range I offender for attempted especially aggravated robbery, a class B felony. In this appeal, the defendant contends (1) that the evidence is legally insufficient to sustain his convictions, (2) that the trial court erred in admitting testimony about the defendant's gang affiliation, (3) that admission of five photographs of the victim's body taken during the autopsy were unfairly prejudicial, and (4) that his sentence is excessive. Our review of the record has uncovered no error requiring reversal of the defendant's convictions. We find, however, that the trial court incorrectly applied several enhancement factors to the defendant's sentence. Therefore, we affirm the judgment of the trial court but modify the defendant's sentence for attempted especially aggravated robbery.
I. Facts
Sometime after midnight on Saturday, June 18, 1995, Barry Brodey was shot at close range with a shotgun in the parking lot of the Fantasy Warehouse in Memphis. Hospital personnel pronounced him dead at approximately 2:00 a.m. On the following Monday, Memphis police officers arrested fifteen-year old Carlos Haywood and two co-defendants for Brodey's murder. The evidence at trial provides us with the following narrative of events.
Barry Brodey, who lived in Indianapolis, Indiana, was attending a business-related conference in Memphis. On Friday evening, June 17, 1995, he had dinner with some friends. When he left them at about 11:30 p.m., he said he was headed back to the Peabody Hotel. Brodey never returned to the hotel.
At about 1:00 a.m., Trudy Blanchard, a shift manager at Fantasy Warehouse, heard what she thought were backfires in the parking lot. When she stepped out the front door, she saw someone firing a shotgun into the ground about four cars down from the door. She stepped back inside and asked the cashier to call 911. As she opened the door again, the shooter ran directly past her around the corner of the building. She described him as a young black man, possibly seventeen or eighteen years old, about five feet five inches in height with short, black hair. He was carrying a sawed off shotgun in his hands. She walked down the sidewalk to the place where the shots were fired and found Brodey lying face down on the pavement between two cars.
A few moments later, Sergeant Michael Williams turned into the parking lot. He was on routine patrol in the area and frequently checked the Fantasy Warehouse parking lot because it had recently been the scene of criminal activity. People in the lot flagged him down and told him there had been a shooting. They said that the shooter had run around the corner of the building. Williams then drove around the back of the building and tried to find the suspect. When he saw no one he returned to the scene where he found a bleeding white male lying on the pavement between two automobiles. The man's shoes were off. Several people were trying to stop the bleeding with a towel or blanket. Parked nearby was a black Cadillac. The driver's side door was standing open, the lights were on, and the engine was running. The back and rear side windows had been shot out. The sergeant found a handgun and
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