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State v. Garrett12/1/2005
The conviction results from a charge that, in the early-morning hours of February 24, 1992, the defendant started a fire in the Davidson County home in which he and the 24-year-old victim, Lori Lance, were residing. After the firefighters' entry into the smoldering house, they found the victim lying prone in a utility room in the rear of the small house. The utility room door was closed, and the victim lay under an aluminum lawn chair and some toys. The victim died of smoke and gas inhalation.
The trial presently under review is the defendant's second trial on the charged offense. The first trial resulted in a first degree murder conviction that was vacated by this court on appeal in the defendant's post-conviction proceeding. See Claude Francis Garrett v. State, No. M1999-00786-CCA-R3-PC (Tenn. Crim. App., Nashville, Mar. 22, 2001) (vacating the conviction and ordering a new trial on the basis of the state's withholding of exculpatory information).
Prior to the second trial, the court held an evidentiary hearing upon the defendant's motion to dismiss the indictment. In his motion, the defendant claimed that the state had lost or destroyed physical evidence, including crime-scene photographs. In the hearing, a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) forensic analyst testified that she analyzed material samples taken from the burned house by fire investigator Kenneth Porter, including soil from under the house, liquid from the driveway, wood from the floor inside the front door, and a ten- gallon plastic container outside the house. She also analyzed material samples submitted by Metro police detective David Miller. Her analysis was designed to determine the presence of any petroleum distillate in the samples.
Investigator Porter testified in the hearing that he took the samples of soil and of wood from the floor near the front door because he thought that the floor in that area of the house was the point of origin of the fire. He delivered his samples to, and retrieved them from, the TBI laboratory. Later, following the defendant's conviction in his first trial, Mr. Porter destroyed the samples.
Regina Draper, an investigator with the district attorney general's office, testified in the hearing that, in August 1993, she checked out 38 crime-scene photograph negatives from the police property room, delivered them to an assistant district attorney general, and did not take them back to the police department. She testified that the negatives were not in the district attorney general's file and that she had no knowledge of their whereabouts.
Following the hearing, the trial court ruled that the presence of Mr. Porter's physical samples were unnecessary to assuring a fair trial because the defendant could rely upon laboratory analysis of the samples that showed that they contained no petroleum distillates. The trial court opined that the defendant failed to establish that the photograph negatives were not the negatives of photographs introduced into evidence in the defendant's first trial and that he, therefore, failed to show that they were unavailable.
Also, prior to the second trial, the court conducted a hearing upon the defendant's challenge of Agent James Cooper as an expert witness on the cause of the fatal fire in the present case. In the hearing, Agent Cooper testified about his background and training as an arson investigator, and the trial court ruled that the witness was qualified to render his opinion on the origin of the fire.
The defendant's second trial began on July 21, 2003. The victim's mother, Sandra Lee Jones, testified that she was concerned about the victim's safety in the house that she occupied w
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