## Facts

- Police responded to a 911 call at William R. Stevens’s Nashville mobile home and found two homicide victims: Stevens’s wife, Sandra Jean Stevens, and his mother-in-law, Myrtle Wilson.
- The State’s theory was that Stevens hired 18-year-old Corey Milliken to kill both women and stage the scene to resemble a burglary.
- It was undisputed that Milliken killed the victims; he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and received a life sentence.
- Investigators recovered physical evidence tying Milliken to the killings, including blood on his clothing and signs of recent injury, and located a bag containing jewelry and other items consistent with staging a burglary.
- At trial, Stevens argued Milliken acted independently, allegedly motivated by a sexual fixation on Sandra, rather than by Stevens’s direction.
- Stevens sought to present a former FBI crime-scene analyst to offer behavioral/profiling opinions attributing the crimes to Milliken’s supposed sexual-aggression patterns; the trial court limited the expert to physical crime-scene observations and staging evidence.
- A jury convicted Stevens of two counts of premeditated first-degree murder (murder-for-hire theory) and especially aggravated robbery, and imposed death sentences for each murder based on statutory aggravators.

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court erred under Tennessee Rule of Evidence 702 by limiting the defense expert’s non-scientific profiling/behavioral testimony to reliable crime-scene analysis.
2. Whether excluding testimony from Milliken’s foster father about Milliken’s prior bad acts improperly restricted the defense, and if error occurred, whether it was harmless.
3. Whether the trial court’s hearsay and related evidentiary rulings reflected bias or were otherwise reversible error.
4. Whether the statutory aggravating circumstances were supported by the evidence and whether the death sentences were disproportionate.

## Decision

- The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed Stevens’s convictions for first-degree murder and especially aggravated robbery.
- The court affirmed both death sentences and the consecutive life-without-parole sentence for especially aggravated robbery.
- The court held the trial court did not abuse its discretion by limiting the defense expert to analysis of physical crime-scene evidence and staging, excluding speculative offender-profiling opinions.
- The court held exclusion of the foster father’s testimony about Milliken’s prior bad acts was error but harmless given the overall proof and other evidence presented about Milliken.
- The court found the trial court’s hearsay and evidentiary rulings were applied in an even-handed manner.
- The court upheld the jury’s findings of the two aggravating circumstances (prior violent felony and employment of another for remuneration) and concluded the death sentences were not disproportionate.

## Legal Principles

- Non-scientific expert testimony must rest on a sufficiently reliable foundation and must assist the trier of fact; experience-based opinions may be limited when reliability is not shown or when the testimony risks confusing the jury or substituting for the jury’s role.
- Trial courts have broad discretion to limit expert testimony to reliable crime-scene interpretation and to exclude speculative behavioral profiling that purports to identify motive or authorship without adequate reliability.
- Erroneous exclusion of defense evidence warrants reversal only if it more probably than not affected the judgment or resulted in prejudice; otherwise, the error is harmless.
- Evidentiary rulings, including hearsay and character-evidence determinations, are reviewed with deference to the trial court’s discretion absent a showing of reversible error or partiality.
- In capital cases, appellate review includes whether statutory aggravators are supported by the evidence, whether aggravation outweighs mitigation beyond a reasonable doubt, and whether the death sentence is excessive or disproportionate compared with similar cases.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed Stevens’s murder-for-hire convictions and death sentences, holding that the trial judge properly limited non-scientific expert profiling testimony to reliable crime-scene analysis, that exclusion of certain impeachment/character evidence about the actual killer was harmless, that evidentiary rulings were even-handed, and that the aggravating circumstances and proportionality review supported imposition of death.


State v. Stevens, 78 S.W.3d 817 (Tenn. 2002)