State of Tennessee v. Phennix Givens
Syllabus
A Shelby County jury convicted Defendant, Phennix Givens, of three counts of especially aggravated kidnapping, one count of aggravated rape, two counts of aggravated assault, and one count of aggravated cruelty to animals. The trial court sentenced Defendant to an effective forty-six-year sentence. Defendant appeals, arguing that the evidence was insufficient to support his convictions and that the trial court abused its discretion in imposing consecutive sentencing. Following our review of the entire record, the briefs of the parties, and the applicable law, we affirm the judgments of the trial court.
How courts have described this case
Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.
- noting that affidavit by defendant’s parents stating that he would have rejected the plea was, by itself, insuffi- cient evidence of prejudice, but remanding for further evidentiary hearing
- also distinguishing Toro due to the amount of evidence of prejudice and including a concurrence by Judge Rovner that discusses why the Toro rule is unsound
- parental affidavits and government admissions were objective evidence supporting defendant’s self-serving statements and warranting a hearing
- “Rule 4, like Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6), acts as a screening device to weed out meritless claims from the federal court system.”
- objective evidence that the defendant would have accepted a guilty plea instead of going to trial
- “Prewitt had absolutely no personal knowledge regarding the facts underlying his allegation.Therefore, his affidavit could not constitute evidence supporting his claim.”
Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).
Sourced from CourtListener / Free Law Project (CC0).
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