Nashville, Tenn. – Today, in a divided opinion, the majority of the Tennessee Supreme Court held that false statements were sufficient to support a defendant’s forgery convictions.
The case involves a woman who was convicted of forging and cashing checks through her grandparents’ joint bank account.
Lloyd Gordon discovered the bank account had been overdrawn after his wife of sixty years, Rose Gordon, passed away. Mrs. Gordon always wrote the checks on their joint bank account because Mr. Gordon had poor eyesight.
The couple’s granddaughter, defendant Ginny Parker, was charged with forgery for five checks on the account, written to her and cashed by her.
Shortly after her arrest, Ms. Parker was interviewed by a police detective. She claimed she gave her grandparents $4,000 of her own money and used the checks only to spend down her own $4,000. She said the checks were to pay expenses like medical bills.
In the trial, the Gordons’ bank records showed there had been no $4,000 deposit; the only deposits were the Gordons’ monthly retirement income. And the checks were not written to medical providers; they were written in round amounts directly to Ms. Parker. The trial judge found that Ms. Parker’s statements were not credible and that the checks were not authorized. She was convicted of five counts of forgery.
The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed. The Tennessee Supreme Court granted Ms. Parker permission to appeal on whether the evidence was sufficient to show the checks were not authorized.
Unlike in the original trial before a conviction, in an appeal of a conviction, a criminal defendant has the burden of showing that the evidence was not sufficient. Appellate courts must affirm the conviction if any rational person deciding the facts at trial could have convicted the defendant based on the proof presented during the trial.
Ms. Parker argued that the trial judge’s disbelief of her claim that the checks were authorized was not enough, on its own, to conclude that the checks were unauthorized. The majority of the Tennessee Supreme Court rejected this argument. In addition to Ms. Parker’s false statements, the Court considered documentary evidence showing their falsity, including bank records revealing that no $4,000 deposit into the Gordons’ bank account had been made The Court’s majority held that this was sufficient evidence that the checks were not authorized and affirmed the convictions.
Justice Dwight E. Tarwater wrote a separate opinion dissenting from the majority’s opinion, joined by Justice Mary L. Wagner. In the dissent, the Justices say the evidence was insufficient to convict Ms. Parker of forgery because there was no evidence Ms. Parker lacked her grandmother’s authorization, and Ms. Parker’s confusing out-of-court statements regarding the $4,000 merely undermined her credibility or accuracy without proving or disproving whether she had her grandmother’s authorization. The dissent concluded that the lack of proof on this issue resulted in a failure to establish an element of a criminal offense. As a result, the conviction could not stand.
To read the majority opinion in State v. Parker, authored by Justice Holly Kirby, and the separate opinion authored by Justice Dwight E. Tarwater, visit the Supreme Court opinions section of TNCourts.gov.