State v. C. Smith ( 2010 )

IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE
AT KNOXVILLE FILED
SEPTEMBER 1998 SESSION
November 3, 1998
Cecil Crowson, Jr.
Appellate C ourt Clerk
STATE OF TENNESSEE, )
)
Appellee, ) No. 03C01-9712-CR-00554
)
) Knox County
v. )
) Honorable Richard R. Baumgartner, Judge
)
CARLTON SMITH, ) (Possession with intent to sell cocaine)
)
Appellant. )
For the Appellant: For the Appellee:
Darryl Humphrey John Knox Walkup
P.O. Box 6655 Attorney General of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37914 and
Ellen H. Pollack
Assistant Attorney General of Tennessee
425 Fifth Avenue North
Nashville, TN 37243-0493
Randall E. Nichols
District Attorney General
and
Paula Gentry
Assistant District Attorney General
City County Building
Knoxville, TN 37902
OPINION FILED:____________________
AFFIRMED
Joseph M. Tipton
Judge
OPINION
The defendant, Carlton Smith, appeals as of right from his conviction
following a jury trial in the Knox County Criminal Court for possession with intent to sell
less than one-half gram of cocaine, a Class C felony.1 As a Range II, multiple offender,
the defendant was sentenced to eight years in the custody of the Department of
Correction, and he was fined ten thousand dollars. On appeal, the defendant contends
that the evidence is insufficient to support his conviction. He argues that the state did
not prove beyond a reasonable doubt all of the essential elements of the crime. We
affirm the trial court’s judgment of conviction.
Our standard of review when the sufficiency of the evidence is questioned
on appeal is "whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the
prosecution, any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the
crime beyond a reasonable doubt." Jackson v. Virginia, 443 U.S. 307, 319, 99 S. Ct.
2781, 2789 (1979). This means that we do not reweigh the evidence, but presume that
the jury has resolved all conflicts in the testimony and drawn all reasonable inferences
from the evidence in favor of the state. See State v. Sheffield, 676 S.W.2d 542, 547
(Tenn. 1984); State v. Cabbage, 571 S.W.2d 832, 835 (Tenn. 1978).
In the light most favorable to the state, the evidence shows that at
approximately 10:30 or 11:00 p.m. while on duty, Officer David Rausch of the Knoxville
Police Department saw the defendant at College Homes, a housing project at which
drugs were commonly sold. The defendant did not live at College Homes. The
defendant was leaning into the driver’s side of a truck with his hands inside the truck.
The driver of the truck also was not a resident of College Homes. Either the defendant
1
The defendant was also convicted of resisting arrest, a Class B misdemeanor, but he
raises no issues on appeal relative to this conviction.
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or the driver saw Officer Rausch, and the defendant pushed his hands away from the
truck and said, “Go.” The driver fled away in the truck.
The evidence shows that Officer Rausch recognized the defendant as he
approached him, and the defendant started to walk across the street toward College
Homes. When Officer Rausch ordered the defendant to come to him, the defendant
started to run away. The defendant did not stop running even though Officer Rausch
yelled for him to stop. The defendant struggled with Officer Rausch when he was
stopped and arrested for resisting arrest. Officer Rausch then conducted a cursory
search for weapons, but he did not search inside the several layers of clothing the
defendant was wearing. Officer Rausch placed the defendant in the backseat of his
cruiser and drove to a location to complete some paperwork. During this time, the
defendant fidgeted, moved around in the backseat, and complained that the handcuffs
were too tight. The defendant denied having any drugs on him, and he told Officer
Rausch that he had fled because he was afraid of the police.
When Officer Rausch arrived at the jail and took the defendant out of the
cruiser, he found in the backseat a plastic bag containing fifteen smaller plastic bags of
white powder. One of the smaller bags contained less than one-half gram of cocaine,
and the remaining bags contained a counterfeit controlled substance. Officer Rausch
testified that each of the smaller bags was called a “quail” and was often sold at twenty
dollars each. Before arresting the defendant, Officer Rausch had conducted a safety
check of his cruiser and found nothing in the backseat.
3
The evidence is sufficient to convict. The judgment of conviction is
affirmed.
________________________________
Joseph M. Tipton, Judge
CONCUR:
_________________________
John H. Peay, Judge
_________________________
David G. Hayes, Judge
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