State vs. DeWayne Greene

Defendant, Dewayne Greene, was convicted by a guilty plea of simple assault, resisting arrest, evading arrest, and reckless endangerment in Hamblen County Circuit Court. The trial court sentenced Defendant to eleven months and twenty-nine days, with three-hundred days to be served in confinement. Defendant was also indicted by the Jefferson County Grand Jury for two counts of aggravated assault arising from incidents involving the same victim as those which generated the Hamblen County indictments. Defendant pled guilty in the Jefferson County Circuit Court with the condition that the trial court "reserve an entry of conviction" until the court heard Defendant's motion to dismiss on grounds of double jeopardy. After the trial court heard and denied Defendant's motion, it sentenced Defendant as a Range I offender to concurrent terms of six years for each count of aggravated assault. In this appeal, Defendant argues that (1) double jeopardy bars the Jefferson County convictions because Defendant's previous Hamblen County convictions were based upon the same conduct, and (2) Defendant's sentence for the aggravated assault convictions is excessive. After a thorough review of the record, we find that only Defendant's sentencing issue is properly before this Court. Defendant failed to properly reserve the double jeopardy issue as a certified question of law for appellate review. We affirm the sentence of six years for count 1 and reduce the sentence for count 2 to five years; the total effective sentence remains at six years.