State of Tennessee v. Shawn Hazeltine

A Marshall County jury convicted the Defendant, Shawn Edward Hazeltine, of three counts of aggravated assault and three counts of reckless endangerment. The trial court merged the reckless endangerment convictions with the aggravated assault convictions and then sentenced the Defendant to an aggregate seven years and seven months in prison. On appeal, the Defendant contends that: (1) insufficient evidence exists to support the convictions; (2) the trial court erred in not consolidating the three counts of reckless endangerment; and (3) the trial court erred by not ordering alternative sentencing and by ordering consecutive sentencing. We conclude that sufficient evidence exists in the record to support the Defendant's convictions and that the trial court did not err in sentencing the Defendant. However, we conclude that the trial court erred by failing to consolidate the three reckless endangerment convictions into one conviction. We further conclude that the trial court erred by entering a judgment form for Count 2 showing a conviction for reckless aggravated assault, because the trial court dismissed Count 2 of the indictment. Therefore, we remand the case to the trial court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.