Washington County Criminal Court Judge Stacy Street reversed a ruling he previously made that would have prevented prosecutors from substituting the pathologist in a murder case.
Street ruled earlier this month that Aaron Storyâs constitutional rights to confront his accuser would be violated if he allowed the substitution.
Story, 34, was indicted Sept. 11 in the June 2, 2018, shooting death of Christopher Connelly, whose body was discovered by a woman intending to walk her dogat the Lone Oak trailhead that Saturday morning.
The issue came up because Dr. Matrina Schmidt, who worked as a forensic pathologist at ETSU, performed the autopsy and prepared the report in the death of 38-year-old Connelly.
When investigators for the Millington Police Department swabbed the 1987 crime scene, they didn’t lift fingerprints from the sink knobs, door handles or toilet handle.
Neither were prints taken from the open kitchen drawer where officials assumed the knife used as the murder weapon was taken.
And those are just some of the errors that attorneys for Pervis Payne, a man convicted of a double murder, say marred the investigation and the years that have led up to Payne’s plea for clemency.
Now, it’s possible that Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is considering some of those alleged errors as he weighs Payne’s petition for clemency.
Appeal Denied Again for Man Convicted on 9 Counts of Rape of a Child Apr 13, 2021 at 06:30 am by WGNS
Last year, WGNS told you about a convicted rapist who filed an appeal asking for post-conviction relief, but was denied. The registered sex offender then filed another appeal, which was denied last week.
Christopher N. Hernandez decided to challenge the courts in 2020 suggesting that he never had the effective assistance of counsel. However, court documents released last year on November 30th showed the Court of Criminal Appeals believed he did indeed have the effective assistance of counsel.
Hernandez was convicted on nine counts of Rape of a Child, two counts of Aggravated Sexual Battery and one count of Solicitation of a Minor. Those convictions were heard in the courtroom of Judge Royce Taylor, who has since retired. The convictions also came with a twenty-year sentence in prison in exchange for Hernandez waiving his right to appeal.