Background
In September 2019, John Champion hosted a sleepover at his Memphis-area residence for his stepdaughter and her thirteen-year-old friend, R.B. With R.B.’s mother trusting the home was properly supervised, Champion gave the girls alcohol and medication, then drove them around to vandalize cars. After his stepdaughter fell ill and went to bed, Champion sat beside R.B. in a recliner, placed his hand on her thigh, slid it up her shorts, and touched the outside of her vagina. R.B. immediately texted a friend about the assault before contacting her godparents to be picked up. A Shelby County grand jury indicted Champion in July 2020 for one count of sexual battery by an authority figure.
Before trial, Champion moved to dismiss the indictment under State v. Ferguson, arguing the State failed to preserve text messages between R.B. and her friend sent on the night of the offense. The lead investigator had photographed the messages on the friend’s phone rather than seizing the device for forensic extraction; R.B.’s phone had already been wiped. The trial court denied the motion, finding the phones were never in the State’s possession and that comparable evidence could have been obtained from carriers. A jury trial proceeded in September 2024 and returned a guilty verdict. At a March 2025 sentencing hearing the trial court, citing Champion’s risk to the community, lack of empathy for the victim, and a dishonest answer in his psychosexual evaluation, imposed a four-year confinement sentence as a Range I offender.
Champion appealed on five grounds: (1) improper denial of two peremptory challenges following reverse-Batson rulings; (2) the State’s failure to preserve the text message evidence; (3) the trial court’s refusal to declare a mistrial after the lead investigator inadvertently referred to “victims” (plural) during cross-examination; (4) the trial court’s failure to require the State to elect a single charged incident; and (5) abuse of discretion in ordering confinement rather than probation.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the trial court on all five issues. On the reverse-Batson claim, the court held that the trial court committed no clear error. After Champion struck seven consecutive Caucasian jurors, the trial court properly found a prima facie showing of racial discrimination, rejected Champion’s proffered race-neutral explanations as pretextual—including a characterization of a juror’s statement that was “taken completely out of context”—and seated the challenged jurors. Because credibility determinations in Batson proceedings are peculiarly within the trial judge’s province, the appellate court declined to disturb those findings.
On the Ferguson evidence-preservation claim, the court held the State had no duty to preserve data on phones it never possessed or controlled. Because the investigator took photographs of the messages, turned them over to prosecutors, and the defendant had an independent avenue to obtain phone-carrier records, the trial court correctly found no fundamentally unfair deprivation of potentially exculpatory evidence. The court also affirmed the denial of a mistrial over the word “victims”: the statement was elicited by defense counsel’s own cross-examination question, the trial court found it inadvertent, and an offered curative instruction was available—factors that collectively fell short of the manifest necessity required to declare a mistrial.
On the election-of-offense issue, the court reviewed for plain error because no contemporaneous objection was raised at the close of proof, and found Champion could not satisfy that demanding standard. Finally, the court upheld the confinement sentence, concluding the trial court had carefully weighed the statutory sentencing principles, applied appropriate enhancement and mitigating factors, and reasonably found that Champion posed a risk to the community—particularly given his dishonest psychosexual evaluation responses and his framing of the thirteen-year-old victim as manipulative.
Key Takeaways
- A pattern of striking jurors of the same race, even accompanied by facially race-neutral explanations, can support a successful reverse-Batson challenge; appellate courts give great deference to trial court credibility findings on pretext.
- Under State v. Ferguson, the State’s preservation duty does not extend to evidence—including cell phone data—that was never in its possession or control, especially where comparable evidence was independently obtainable.
- An inadvertent prejudicial misstatement elicited by defense counsel, combined with the trial court’s offer of a curative instruction, will generally not rise to the level of manifest necessity required for a mistrial.
- Failure to object to a defective election of offense at the close of proof forfeits ordinary appellate review, limiting the defendant to the demanding plain-error standard.
- A trial court may impose confinement over probation for a first-range sex offense where the record supports findings of community risk, lack of remorse, and dishonest conduct during the presentence evaluation process.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the breadth of reverse-Batson doctrine in Tennessee criminal proceedings: defendants, not just prosecutors, can be found to exercise peremptory challenges in a racially discriminatory pattern, and trial courts retain substantial discretion to seat challenged jurors once a prima facie showing is established. The opinion also offers a clear restatement of the boundaries of the State’s evidence-preservation duty in the digital age—law enforcement’s failure to perform a forensic extraction of a privately-owned device does not automatically constitute a constitutional violation when the device was never seized.
For practitioners, the case highlights the strategic risks of cross-examination that opens the door to prejudicial responses: because the “victims” remark was attributable to defense questioning, the court gave it minimal weight. The sentencing analysis likewise signals that dishonest responses in court-ordered psychosexual evaluations can independently justify departing from alternative sentencing even for a first-time offender whose offense did not cause serious bodily injury.