Tennessee appellate panel hears challenge to hearsay, prior-act evidence and sentence in Howell case

An appellate panel heard arguments in the appeal of David Robert Howell on claims that the trial court erred in admitting witness statements and prior-act evidence and in imposing sentence.

Defense counsel Gregory Isaacs told the court that Howell’s conviction and sentence should be reversed because the trial judge improperly admitted an out-of-court statement under the excited-utterance exception to the hearsay rule, allowed the prosecutor to characterize routine proof as evidence of “grooming” without the required 404(b) process, and imposed an excessive sentence after improperly weighing enhancement factors.

Isaacs summarized the underlying facts as presented at trial: on Aug. 5 a teenage girl identified by initials SC and a friend identified as JR were staying at the home of Howell and Laura Howe; both girls ran from a bedroom after an alleged incident in which SC said Howell touched her. Isaacs stressed that JR’s initial out-of-court remark to others — the statement the state introduced as an excited utterance — was later disavowed at trial, and he argued…