Background
On March 17, 2023, law enforcement officers conducting a sex-offender sweep in Benton County, Tennessee—searching for a missing juvenile—went to the home of Jereme Walker Amis, a registered sex offender on community supervision for life following a 1997 aggravated-sexual-battery conviction. Amis consented to the search. Officers discovered a loaded .32-caliber handgun in a holster on a bedroom dresser. Amis told a lieutenant he had found the gun in a box of fittings at his employer’s plumbing shop; the employer confirmed he kept a gun there, that the box was stored in a warehouse Amis could access, and that the gun was taken without permission. A second person, Amis’s girlfriend Heather Wright, was asleep in the bedroom but could not reach the dresser from the bed. Amis denied ownership at trial, testifying he had no knowledge of the gun.
A Benton County grand jury indicted Amis on three counts: possession of a firearm after conviction of a felony crime of violence (aggravated sexual battery, Class B felony); possession of a firearm after conviction of a felony drug offense (possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver, Class C felony); and violating the conditions of community supervision for life (Class E felony). Before trial, Amis offered to stipulate to all elements except actual possession, and alternatively asked the court to bifurcate the community-supervision count. The trial court denied both requests. The jury convicted on all three counts, the firearm counts were merged, and Amis was sentenced to an effective twenty-four years.
On appeal, Amis argued: (1) the trial court committed plain error by rejecting his stipulation offer; (2) the court abused its discretion in denying bifurcation of count three; and (3) the twenty-four-year sentence was excessive.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed on all three issues. On the stipulation question, the court acknowledged that Amis waived plenary review by failing to raise the issue in his motion for new trial, and it exercised discretion to consider the issue only for plain error given the overlapping and easily confused nature of his stipulation and bifurcation claims. The court agreed that the trial court legally erred—under State v. James, 81 S.W.3d 751 (Tenn. 2002), which adopted Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172 (1997)—by refusing Amis’s offer to stipulate to his felon status when the sole purpose of the prior-conviction evidence was to prove a status element. The State’s justification that the jury needed to know Amis was a sex offender to understand why officers could lawfully search his home was rejected; officers could simply have testified that Amis consented to the search. Nevertheless, the court found the error did not reach plain-error magnitude because the evidence of possession was overwhelming (Amis told officers where he obtained the gun, and the employer corroborated the specific location), the jury was instructed not to use the prior convictions as propensity evidence, and defense counsel conceded at oral argument that even with a stipulation the jury would still have heard Amis had prior felony convictions.
On bifurcation, the court held that bifurcation—a procedure that splits guilt and punishment determinations—is most appropriate when a defendant faces both status offenses (felon-in-possession) and non-status offenses involving violence or force. Here, all three counts were status offenses. Because stipulation, not bifurcation, was the proper mechanism to limit prejudice in an all-status-offense case, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the bifurcation request. The court also clarified that the trial court appeared to confuse bifurcation with severance but that the confusion was inconsequential because neither remedy was appropriate on these facts. On sentencing, the court reviewed for abuse of discretion with a presumption of reasonableness and affirmed the twenty-four-year effective sentence, finding the trial court properly applied multiple enhancement factors and appropriately declined to apply the mitigating factor that the conduct caused no risk of serious bodily injury.
Key Takeaways
- Under Old Chief and State v. James, a trial court errs when it refuses a defendant’s offer to stipulate to felon status where that status is the sole purpose of introducing prior-conviction evidence—but the error does not automatically warrant relief; the plain-error inquiry still requires a showing the error probably changed the outcome.
- Bifurcation of a status offense (felon-in-possession) from other charges is the “better procedure” when the defendant also faces non-status charges involving violence, but it is not the appropriate remedy when all counts are status offenses; stipulation is the correct tool in that scenario.
- Raising a plain-error argument for the first time in a reply brief is procedurally disfavored in Tennessee; courts retain discretion to address it only in limited circumstances, such as where related claims in the opening brief created genuine terminological confusion.
- An overwhelming evidence record—here, the defendant’s own statement directing officers to the specific location of the stolen firearm, corroborated by the owner—can defeat plain-error relief even where constitutional or evidentiary error occurred at trial.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the practical limits of Old Chief stipulations in Tennessee: trial courts that wrongly reject them will not automatically face reversal when the remaining proof of guilt is strong and curative instructions were given. For defense practitioners, the case is a reminder to preserve stipulation objections in a motion for new trial and to raise plain-error arguments in the opening brief rather than the reply—strategic silence on waiver issues risks forfeiture even where the underlying claim has merit.
The court’s careful distinction among severance, bifurcation, and stipulation also provides useful guidance for practitioners and trial judges navigating status-offense cases. Where every count is a status offense, the opinion makes clear that the preferred path to limiting prejudice is a stipulation to felon status—not a request to split counts into separate guilt phases—and that conflating these procedural tools can result in both the wrong remedy being sought and the wrong one being denied.