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The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled
in a recent opinion, State of Tennessee v. Michael Farmer and Anthony Clark, that a gunshot wound is not necessarily the same thing as a
serious bodily injury. The state’s high court clarified the legal standards in
an opinion published late last month in the case of two men found guilty of
especially aggravated robbery for shooting a man in the leg during a 2008
Memphis robbery.
The victim, Terrell Westbrooks,
was shot while trying to flee from the two burglars who burst into an apartment
where he and a friend were illegally purchasing prescription painkillers. Westbrooks
testified that he did not at first realize he had been shot, a through and
through injury that left surprisingly little damage. In fact, Westbrooks said
that he was treated at a hospital and released in around an hour.
The opinion, written by Justice
Sharon G. Lee, said the prosecutors failed to show that Westbrooks was at risk
of dying, lost consciousness or suffered extreme pain, disfigurement or
substantial impairment. Those are the standards spelled out in the state
statutes that define serious bodily injury. Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-11-106(a)(34) states that “serious bodily injury” is defined as “bodily
injury that involves: (A) A substantial risk of death; (B) Protracted
unconsciousness; (C) Extreme physical pain; (D) Protracted or obvious
disfigurement; [or] (E) Protracted loss or substantial impairment of a function
of a bodily member, organ or mental faculty.”
As a result of the failure to demonstrate
the statutory definition, the Court threw out the especially aggravated robbery
convictions for Anthony Clark and Michael Farmer. It instead ordered the trial
court to sentence the two on the much less serious charge of aggravated
robbery.
In a concurring opinion, Justice
William C. Koch Jr. said the case demonstrated the need for criminal
prosecutions going forward to use expert medical testimony when trying to prove
serious bodily injury. “We should candidly acknowledge that some injuries which
appear bloody and gruesome to laypersons may not have a substantial risk of
death, while other injuries that are seemingly benign might, in fact, pose a
substantial risk of death.”
See
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