The Tennessee Supreme Court has affirmed the death sentence Cocke County jurors imposed on a truck driver for his role in the contract killing of his wife who was shot at close range after being lured to a remote area.
Jonathan Wesley Stephenson was first sentenced to death in 1990 for the first degree murder of Lisa Stephenson. He also received a 25 year sentence for conspiracy to commit murder. A new sentencing hearing was ordered due to a legal error nullifying the jurors’ verdict. By agreement with the prosecution and defense, the death sentence was later changed to life without parole for the murder and 60 years in prison for conspiracy.
Stephenson then challenged the reduced sentence and the Tennessee Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing hearing. Jurors again imposed a death sentence which was upheld by the Supreme Court.
“Having carefully reviewed the record and relevant legal authority, we conclude that none of the errors alleged by the defendant warrants relief,” Justice Janice M. Holder wrote for the majority. Chief Justice William M. Barker and Justices E. Riley Anderson and Cornelia A. Clark concurred in the decision filed Friday.
In a separate concurring and dissenting opinion, Justice Adolpho A. Birch, Jr., said he agrees with the majority that Stephenson’s convictions should be affirmed, but disagreed concerning the majority’s conclusion regarding an issue raised by Stephenson in his appeal.
“I respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority’s opinion concluding that the Sixth Amendment right to confrontation of witnesses and the state constitutional right to confront witnesses ‘face-to-face’ does not apply to capital sentencing hearings,” Birch wrote.
As in previous dissents, Birch also wrote that the method used by the court to review and compare Tennessee capital cases is “inadequate” in his view. State law requires the court to conduct comparative proportionality review in each death penalty case to determine whether the sentence is disproportionate to the penalties in similar cases.
Holder said the court recognizes that no two cases involve identical circumstances. Quoting an earlier case, State v. Bland, she wrote that the court’s objective is not to “’prove that a defendant’s death sentence is perfectly symmetrical, but to identify and to invalidate the aberrant death sentence.’”
“We conclude that the sentence of death has not been imposed arbitrarily, that the evidence supports the jury’s finding of the statutory aggravating circumstance, that the evidence supports the jury’s finding that the aggravating circumstance outweighs the mitigating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt and that the sentence is not excessive or disproportionate,” Holder wrote.
The court set an Oct. 11, 2006, execution date for Stephenson, who has appeals remaining.
Stephenson and a co-defendant, Ralph Thompson, Jr., were found guilty of killing Lisa Stephenson, the mother of two young children, with a rifle as she sat in her vehicle in an isolated area in Cocke County. Thompson received a life sentence for the murder and an additional 25 years for conspiracy to commit murder. Each defendant blamed the other for the actual shooting.
Stephenson had offered Thompson and others cash, a boat, a motor and a truck if they would kill his wife. He complained that he would “lose everything he had worked for” if they divorced.
The court considered and rejected all issues raised by Stephenson in his appeal. The decision upholds a decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals, which also found his claims to be without merit.