At oral argument before a three-judge panel, attorney Jonathan Harwell, counsel for defendant-appellant Cody Mashburn, told the court the trial judge imposed a 10-year term without considering a validated risk-and-needs assessment (RNR) required by Tennessee law and asked the panel to order a new sentencing hearing.

Harwell said a presentence investigation report was marked and filed as Exhibit 1 but that the PSI did not include a validated RNR. "It was not prepared. It was not submitted to the court," Harwell told the panel, noting the PSI itself stated no RNR had been conducted because Mashburn was on supervised probation.

The issue matters, Harwell argued, because Tenn. Code Ann. §40-35-210 (cited during argument) instructs courts to consider the results of a validated RNR when evaluating sentencing alternatives and that the statutory text twice identifies the RNR as a required consideration. Harwell cited this court
s precedent (including Rice and the Anthony Ross panel decision) and said those authorities support that a sentence imposed without an RNR is erroneous and typically requires resentencing rather than being forfeited by a failure to object below.

State counsel (identified in the transcript as General Barker) acknowledged the trial court did not have the validated RNR in the record but argued the issue was not preserved at trial. The State urged ordinary issue-preservation and waiver principles apply to sentencing claims and cautioned that treating the statutory requirement as per se nonwaivable could allow litigants to "sandbag" an issue and to convert the statute into a dead letter through practice.

The panel
sked focused questions about who bears the duty to ensure an RNR is prepared and whether parole-eligibility (the service-percentage or "release eligibility" figure) is part of the sentence a trial court must consider when fixing a sentence. Harwell said the service percentage affects the harshness of a sentence and that a sentence of the same length with a higher service percentage is "harsher," so the trial court should account for it. The State and some panel members expressed skepticism that parole outcomes, which are decided by the Department of Correction, should be treated as a determinative sentencing factor.

Harwell also identified a separate but related procedural problem at the end of the sentencing hearing. He said the record shows the judge announced a 10-year sentence but that when the parties clarified that the aggravated-burglary portion carried a 100% service requirement, the court did not explain how that corrected or altered the court's earlier reasoning. Harwell summarized: "the sentence that was actually imposed of 2 years at 35% plus 8 years at a 100%, there was no explanation ever given for that sentence."

The State responded that, while it recognized an error in failing to have the RNR in the record, the defendant nevertheless had the opportunity and duty to preserve his objection below and that the proper remedy depends on whether the absence of an RNR is treated as forfeited. The State framed the dispute as principally about estoppel and preservation rather than the existence of the statutory duty itself.

Neither counsel reported formal votes or produced sentencing orders in the record during argument; the panel asked follow-up questions about the practical effects of remand and whether existing precedent (including Rice and Ross) governs the relief. Harwell told the court the trial judge had available alternatives on resentencing (split confinement; probation on one count and incarceration on the other) and that the record did not foreclose those options if the court concluded the previously announced explanation did not cover the sentence actually imposed.

The panel recessed for 10 minutes and took no oral disposition at the close of argument. No formal ruling was announced at the hearing.