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IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE AT KNOXVILLE
Assigned on Briefs January 29, 2013 STATE OF TENNESSEE v. JAMES RYAN STEPHENSON
Appeal from the Circuit Court for Rhea County No. 17179 J. Curtis Smith, Judge

No. E2012-01914-CCA-R3-CD - Filed February 6, 2013

The defendant, James Ryan Stephenson, was convicted by a Rhea County jury of reckless homicide, a Class D felony, and was sentenced by the trial court as a Range II, multiple offender to eight years in the Department of Correction, to be served consecutively to his sentence in a burglary case for which he was on probation at the time of the homicide. On appeal, he argues that the trial court erred by: (1) granting the State's request to remove a juror on the second day of trial; (2) allowing the State to impeach his credibility with his prior convictions for theft and burglary; (3) issuing a jury instruction on the impeachment of a witness after the testimony of a defense witness but not after the testimony of a State witness; and (4) failing to apply any mitigating factors in sentencing. Following our review, we affirm the judgment of the trial court. Tenn. R. App. P. 3 Appeal as of Right; Judgment of the Circuit Court Affirmed A LAN E. G LENN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which J EFFREY S. B IVINS and R OGER A. P AGE, JJ., joined. B. Jeffery Harmon, District Public Defender; and Mechelle L. Story, Assistant Public Defender, for the appellant, James Ryan Stephenson. Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Lacy Wilber, Assistant Attorney General; James Michael Taylor, District Attorney General; and Will Dunn, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee. OPINION FACTS This case arises out of the March 3, 2009 stabbing death of the victim, Christopher

Reagan, which occurred at the hands of the defendant after the victim, the victim's brother, and three other men went to the defendant's home to confront him about his alleged theft of a video game from one of the victim's friends. The defendant was indicted for the voluntary manslaughter of the victim, tried before a jury, and convicted of the lesser-included offense of reckless homicide, a Class D felony. The undisputed evidence at trial was that a verbal confrontation between the defendant and the victim and his brother escalated into a physical fight on the front porch of the defendant's home, although there were conflicting accounts about which man first put his hands on the other or whether the victim's companions joined in the fight. According to the State's witnesses, the defendant's brother and a friend had broken up the fight and the victim and the victim's brother had turned to leave when the defendant grabbed a sword-cane from inside his home and stabbed the victim in the side. These accounts of the location of the stabbing were corroborated by the physical evidence, which revealed no signs of a struggle or any blood inside the home but a heavy blood spray on the outside wall eighteen inches from the front door. The defendant and his witnesses, by contrast, testified that the stabbing occurred either inside the home or at the door's threshold after the victim continued his assault against the defendant by opening the front door and pushing his way inside. There were also conflicting accounts about what happened after the stabbing. The victim's companions testified that the defendant went out into the yard, pumped his arms in the air, and proudly bragged that he was a "bad motherfucker" and that no one should "mess" with him. The defendant and his witnesses provided a completely different picture, testifying that the victim's friends appeared unconcerned about the victim and that the defendant went outside, carried the victim to his truck, and urged the victim's companions to take him to the hospital immediately. After the victim's companions left with the victim, the defendant called 911 to report the incident. In the 911 call, the defendant said that he stabbed the victim in self-defense and in the defense of his family after the victim and four or five other men came inside his home, where his girlfriend and three young children were present, and assaulted him. A combined sentencing and revocation of probation hearing was held on October 13, 2010, at which the State introduced the defendant's presentence report, which reflected that the twenty-nine-year-old defendant had a substantial criminal history that included at least two felonies and twenty-six misdemeanor convictions, as well as a number of pending charges. The defendant's probation officer, James Janow, testified that the defendant's probation had previously been revoked in a burglary case based on his having picked up new burglary and theft charges. He said that he was currently supervising the defendant's -2-

probation in a burglary of an automobile case, for which he had filed several revocations of probation and addendums to those revocations based on a number of different probation violations. Officer Janow reviewed in detail those violations, which, in addition to technical violations and the defendant's admitted use of marijuana, involved the defendant's having been arrested or charged in a number of new cases, including for public intoxication, theft, burglary, unlawful drug paraphernalia, criminal trespass, and domestic assault. On crossexamination, he conceded that the defendant was emotional each time he discussed the homicide case with him. The State presented several other witnesses in the revocation portion of the hearing, including Officer Jesse Wilkey of the Rhea County Sheriff's Department, who related his witnessing of the events that led to the defendant's March 15, 2010 arrest for public intoxication and possession of unlawful drug paraphernalia and his October 7, 2010 arrest for domestic assault; Shannon Leffew, who testified about how her daughter's inoperable vehicle had been stolen from her property after the defendant expressed an interest in it; and Rhea County Sheriff's Department Deputy Charlie Jenkins, who described how he discovered that the defendant had sold Leffew's vehicle to a recycling yard. At the sentencing portion of the hearing, the victim's father, David Reagan, testified about the anguish that the entire family, especially the victim's daughter, had suffered as a result of the defendant's killing of the victim. The defendant's aunt, Beverly Coxey, and mother, Sandy Francisco, each testified on the defendant's behalf that the defendant was remorseful for his actions and that he had been very involved in helping to parent his girlfriend's three minor children. On November 1, 2010, the trial court entered a detailed written sentencing memorandum in the case. The court found four enhancement factors applicable to the offense: the defendant's previous history of criminal convictions or criminal behavior, to which the court assigned significant weight; the defendant's failure to comply with the conditions of a sentence involving release into the community, to which the court again assigned significant weight; the defendant's employment of a deadly weapon during the commission of the offense, to which the court assigned moderate weight; and the fact that the felony was committed while the defendant was released on probation, to which the court assigned significant weight. See Tenn. Code Ann.

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