Former Tennessee death row inmate Pervis Payne eligible for parole in 4 years
The Tennessee Criminal Court of Appeals Wednesday affirmed Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Paula Skahan's January 2022 ruling that Pervis Payne will serve his two life sentences at the same time. The ruling makes Payne eligible to go before a parole board in less than four years.
Hours after Skahan's January ruling, the Shelby County District Attorney's Office announced that then-District Attorney Amy Weirich had asked the Office of the Tennessee Attorney General to appeal the ruling, which it did.
Payne was being held on death row in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville for a 1988 conviction for killing Millington woman Charisse Christopher, 28, and her 2-year-old daughter Lacie. Christopher's 3-year-old son, Nicholas, survived multiple stab wounds in the attack that took place in Christopher's apartment.
Since the conviction, Payne has maintained his innocence.
In 2021, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a law that allowed death row inmates, like Payne, to appeal their sentences on intellectual disability grounds. Both the U.S. and Tennessee Supreme Courts have said it is unconstitutional to execute someone with an intellectual disability.
A hearing for the appeal, ultimately, would never happen. After the DA's expert examined Payne and his records, the office announced it would drop its pursuit of the death penalty against Payne because the expert "could not say that Payne's intellectual functioning is outside the range for intellectual disability."
Payne's sentence was then set to be two consecutive life sentences with the possibility of parole, because at the time of his sentencing life without parole was not a sentencing option. However, after a December 2021 hearing about his sentences — which did not focus on if Payne was guilty of the killings — Skahan found that he was not a danger to society.
"Mr. Payne has made significant rehabilitative efforts while incarcerated and, if released from custody, the defendant would have an extensive support network to assist him in his continued rehabilitation," she said.
The AG's office claimed in its appeal that Skahan did not have the discretion to conduct a new sentencing hearing for Payne. The Criminal Court of Appeals did not agree, saying the new law that granted Payne his death penalty appeal did not explicitly lay out rules for how to handle a case like Payne's.
"...This is not a situation in which manner of service was included in one provision of the first degree murder sentencing statutes but specifically excluded from another," the appeals court wrote in its opinion. "Instead, multiple sentences and manner of service are not mentioned anywhere in the first degree murder section of the Code.
"The State argues that the silence of these statutes with regard to manner of service indicates a trial court’s lack of jurisdiction to consider the issue. However, if this argument were taken to its logical extension, it would lead to the absurd result that all previously imposed consecutive first degree murder sentences are invalid. We will not presume from silence that the legislature intended to divest a trial court of jurisdiction it would otherwise have."
Lucas Finton is a criminal justice reporter with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com and followed on Twitter @LucasFinton.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Ex-TN death row inmate Pervis Payn eligible for parole in four years
