Court hears dispute over whether Booker allowed resentencing or only parole eligibility for juvenile offender

The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals heard oral arguments on whether the post-conviction court erred in reopening Donovan Daniel’s post-conviction proceedings and resentencing him after the Tennessee Supreme Court’s 2022 Booker decision.

Kirby May, counsel for the State of Tennessee, told the court the post-conviction court lacked authority to resentence Daniel because Booker created only a narrow remedy and did not authorize resentencing for defendants who had individualized sentencing hearings. "This court should reverse the post-conviction court," May said, arguing that Daniel already had an opportunity to present youth-related mitigation at a bifurcated sentencing hearing.

Linda Meador, attorney for Daniel, said the post-conviction court correctly applied Booker and that the remedy here is proper because the original sentencing did not meaningfully consider youth and attendant circumstances and because defense counsel was denied a mitigation expert. "Booker requires more than that," Meador told the panel, arguing the record lacked the psychological and developmental evidence defense experts now commonly provide.

The parties described the underlying convictions and procedural history. The petition relates to Daniel’s convictions for four counts of first-degree murder, especially aggravated robbery and felony possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. Daniel was 17, nearly 18, at the time of the offenses. According to the parties, the post-conviction court in Weakley County, presided over by Judge Jeffrey Parham, reopened the petition, found that Booker applied, reduced the petitioner’s sentence to 60 years and ordered him eligible for a parole hearing so that youth and attendant circumstances could be relitigated.

May emphasized that Daniel had presented four witnesses at the sentencing hearing — a teacher, a preacher, a neighbor and his mother — and that the record showed the jury considered his age and mitigation. May argued the denial of a mitigation expert had been litigated previously in state and federal court and that Booker did not create a new constitutional right to resentencing for defendants who received individualized sentencing hearings.

Meador countered that the sentencing record did not include the kind of expert evidence on adolescent brain development and psychological context that Booker and later Supreme Court decisions outline as necessary to an individualized sentencing inquiry for juveniles. She said earlier counsel did not make a particularized showing for an expert because the legal landscape (including Roper, Miller and subsequent decisions) was not then developed. "We're not asking for a new sentencing hearing. We're just asking for parole eligibility," Meador said, adding that the court should give Daniel the benefit of law that developed after his conviction.

During questioning, members of the panel pressed both sides on the scope of Booker and whether it was limited to defendants who received automatic life-without-parole sentences or applied more broadly to juvenile offenders who received individualized hearings but, according to the defense, did not receive meaningful consideration of youth-related mitigation.

The court took the case under advisement and said it would release an opinion in the coming weeks or months. No ruling was announced at the hearing.

The record before the appeals court includes references to U.S. Supreme Court decisions Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery (the parties cited the 2012 and 2016 decisions), Roper v. Simmons, and state decisions including Booker (Tennessee Supreme Court, 2022) and other Tennessee precedents cited by the parties. Counsel also discussed statutory jury-mitigation instructions (citing Tennessee Code Annotated section 40-35-113 as the source for mitigating-factor language raised in argument).