State of Tennessee v. Christopher Oberton Curry, Jr.

Syllabus

Christopher Oberton Curry, Jr. (\Defendant\) sought this Court's review of his 2022conviction for unlawful possession of a firearm after having been convicted of a felonycrime of violence. Pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-17-1307, unlawfulpossession of a firearm by a convicted felon is a Class E felony; however, if the priorconviction is for a felony crime of violence, the punishment is increased to a Class B felony.At Defendant's trial in the present case, the State introduced a certified judgment ofconviction for Defendant's 2017 conviction for robbery, and the trial judge instructed thejury that robbery is a crime of violence. Robbery, however, is not included in the statutorydefinition of crimes of violence set forth in Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-17-1301(3). Defendant was convicted and received an effective ten-year sentence. On appeal,Defendant argues, among other things, that the evidence was insufficient to support hisconviction because the State failed to establish that the predicate felony of robbery was acrime of violence. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed, concluding that robbery is acrime of violence despite its absence from the statutory definition of the term. We grantedDefendant's application for permission to appeal to consider whether robbery isencompassed within the statutory definition of \crime of violence\ and to determinewhether the evidence at trial was sufficient to support Defendant's conviction. Afterreview, we agree with the lower courts that robbery can be a \crime of violence\ within thedefinition contained in section 39-17-1301(3). However, we conclude that whether robberyis a \crime of violence\ in a particular unlawful possession of a firearm case is a questionfor a properly instructed jury, not the trial judge. Because the State did not present sufficientevidence from which a reasonable jury could conclude that Defendant's prior robbery wasa crime of violence, we reverse, in part, the decision of the Cour