State of Tennessee vs. Michael J. Hite

TN Court of Criminal Appeals — Filed August 23, 2024

Greetings from West Tennessee, and my first installment for the Judicial Outreach Newsletter.  My topic focuses on an issue that confronts all of us as Judges daily: sentencing the Defendant.  Judges are called upon to consider all circumstances in a case and perform a balancing act. My advice to each of you is simple: Trust your informed judicial discretion, while following the law, in impaired driving cases.

The most current example of this is applied in State of Tennessee vs. Michael J. Hite out of Hancock County, TN Circuit Court. This case from August 2024 had the Court of Criminal Appeals, Eastern Section, evaluate the sentencing in a DUI 1^st Offense case that occurred after a jury trial on January 20, 2023.  The trial court sentenced the Defendant to eleven months and twenty-nine days, with all jail time suspended except for sixty days’ service, along with the requisite statutory minimum fine and court costs.

In pronouncing sentence, the Court weighed the trial testimony before it, and specifically focused on the lack of credibility from the Defendant that reflected a lack of appreciation for the seriousness of the offense.  The Court also considered an NCIC printout that outlined the Defendant’s prior criminal history, including an out-of-state DUI conviction from Iowa. The Court then appears to have considered the Defendant’s prior military service and his cooperation with law enforcement at the time of the arrest as balancing factors in determining an appropriate sentence.

On appeal, the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the sentence as the same was within the Court’s discretion for sentencing based on the record before the Court, but the Court went further and evaluated the sentence in light of the decision in State v. Bise, 380 S.W.3d 682 (Tenn. 2012), which poses the question of whether misdemeanor sentences should be specifically reviewed under an abuse of discretion standard without a presumption of correctness, a question not previously considered by our Tennessee Supreme Court.  Beyond this, the Hite court stated that the Tennessee Criminal Sentencing Reform Act (TCA 40-35-101 through 40-35-110) principles and considerations should also be factored into a Judge’s decision on sentencing, including in DUI cases, despite there being statutory minimums within the sentencing framework to guide Judges.

The Court of Criminal Appeals provides two significant takeaways in this case: 1) that “the abuse of discretion standard of appellate review accompanied by a presumption of reasonableness applies to all sentencing decisions.” and 2) that “in sentencing a defendant, a trial court should impose a sentence that is ‘no greater than that deserved for the offense committed’ and is ‘the least severe measure necessary to achieve the purposes for which the sentence is imposed.’” Hite at *6 (internal citations omitted).  Beyond this, and of particular note to us and our colleagues, is the following:

“a person convicted of a misdemeanor offense has no presumption of entitlement to a minimum sentence. State v. Johnson, 15 S.W.3d 515, 518 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1999) (citations omitted). Furthermore, “a trial court need only consider the principles of sentencing and enhancement and mitigating factors in order to comply with the legislative mandates of the misdemeanor sentencing statute.” State v. Troutman, 979 S.W.2d 271, 274 (Tenn. 1998). In sum, “the trial court has more flexibility in misdemeanor sentencing than in felony sentencing.” Johnson, 15 S.W.3d at 518.

In affirming the trial court’s sentence in Hite, the Court stated that the sentence followed the principles and purposes of sentencing and laid out all the relevant information considered by the trial court in pronouncing its sentence.  Even though the trial court was faulted for using an NCIC printout as a partial basis for the sentencing (as it was not a true depiction or report of the Defendant’s criminal history), it was not sufficient error to remove the presumption of correctness or reasonableness to overturn the Defendant’s sentence on appeal.

In short, the Court, through this decision, has effectively empowered Judges handling impaired driving cases to use our instincts when applying the principles of sentencing set out in Sentencing Act, along with the framework for sentencing in DUI cases.  You are the trier of fact, and the appellate courts depend on you to make these factual calls on sentencing.  If your decisions are rooted in determined fact, applicable law, and good judgment, the sentence imposed is likely to be upheld, even if it is not the minimum sentence.

If I can be of assistance to you in your work on these cases, I am always ready and available to help and lend counsel to you.

-Beau E. Pemberton
West TN Regional Judicial Outreach Liaison