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Thread: Clarence Nesbitt - Tennessee Death Row

  1. #1
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    Clarence Nesbitt - Tennessee Death Row




    Summary of Offense:

    On May 20, 1993, Nesbit shot Miriam Cannon, 20, in the head with a .357 Magnum revolver while four of her five young children were in the apartment where the murder took place. A medical examiner testified that prior to the fatal shooting, the victim had been burned repeatedly and her feet had been bruised and scraped during a form of torture known as “falanga.” He said she would have suffered mental and physical pain and distress during the torture.

    Nesbit was sentenced to death on March 24, 1995.

  2. #2
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Killer of young mother of five remains on death row

    Clarence Nesbit was convicted in 1995 of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for killing Miriam Cannon, a young mother of five children.

    Nesbit, now 38, won a new sentencing trial in 2009, but his death sentence and conviction both are on appeal in the state courts.

    The case was an important one to advocates of victims' rights, coming on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in another Tennessee death penalty case involving Millington defendant Pervis Payne.

    "Clarence Nesbit is the leading case in Tennessee that says, 'yes, you can use victim impact under Payne'," said Thomas Henderson, the lead prosecutor in both cases. "It was Payne and Nesbit together that gave Tennessee the right to have victim-impact testimony."

    After Nesbit was convicted, the victims' grandmother testified about the effect Cannon's death had on the children, who ranged in age from 1 to 5.

    Laura May Cannon told jurors that her daughter had been a kind, warm-hearted person and that family members, particularly the children, were depressed and missed her.

    She said the children often had nightmares, talked in their sleep and sometimes re-enacted their mother's murder while playing.

    According to the medical examiner, 20-year-old Miriam Cannon was shot in the left ear with a .357-caliber Magnum, with the bullet exiting behind her right ear.

    She had the number one burned into the left side of her neck. Prosecutors said Nesbit was interested in devil worship and that the mark signified Cannon as his first victim.

    Cannon also had burn marks under her chin and bruises and scrapes to the soles of her feet, signs that she also had been tortured, prosecutors said.

    Nesbit denied inflicting burns and other injuries on Cannon and said the shooting was an accident that occurred when he was fumbling with the pistol.

    He said he panicked and left the apartment, knowing he was leaving four children there with their dead mother's body.

    Nesbit won a new sentencing trial in 2009 when Criminal Court Judge Chris Craft ruled that jurors may have decided on life imprisonment rather than death if they had been told of Nesbit's "traumatic" upbringing and "mental defects."

    The judge also noted in a 72-page opinion that no reason was given to jurors how Nesbit, then 19, became a killer when he had no significant prior criminal record and had dropped out of school to work several jobs to help support his ailing grandmother.

    Nesbit remains on death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville while his case is appealed.

    http://www.commercialappeal.com/news...-on-death-row/
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  3. #3
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    June 17, 2012

    19 years later, Memphis murder victim's children 'still remember'


    Jamerius Chambers (left), Nashanay Hopkins and Jamaicah Chambers visit mother Miriam Cannon's grave.

    By Lawrence Buser
    The Commercial Appeal

    For the past 19 years, Jamerius Chambers has been on a search that he knows may have no end.

    It began one spring day in a Frayser apartment in 1993 when his mother was found shot to death and surrounded by four small crying children who were trying to wake her up.

    "I was one of those kids," said Chambers, now 22. "We were young, but we still remember. People heard what he (the killer) had to say and what the jury had to say, but nobody ever heard what we had to say about it. We were the ones most affected by it."

    He called a reporter soon after the 19th anniversary of the murder of Miriam Cannon, a mother of five children at the age of 20. She was shot to death by Clarence Nesbit, whom she had known only a month.

    The four youngest children -- ages 1 to 4 -- were in the apartment. The oldest, age 5, was at school that day, May 20, 1993.

    Nesbit was convicted and sentenced to death.

    Chambers said the image of his mother's terrible wound and the vacant stare of her lifeless eyes haunts him to this day.

    "It was an image that you never really forget," said Chambers, who was 3 at the time. "My 2-year-old sister was crying, saying 'Mama, Mama get up.' My other sister who was 4 was trying to pull her up off the ground, telling her to get up.

    We didn't understand how this was going to affect us the rest of our lives."

    The children were taken in by relatives, but soon were split up, sent to live with other relatives or placed in foster care.

    It seemed no one wanted five kids with no mother, and no one wanted to hear them talk about what they had seen.

    "Honestly, as I get older my closure is coming to an end, but I didn't start talking about this until a couple of years ago," says Nashanay Hopkins, 24, the oldest child. "We did counseling for a while, but then it stopped. We had behavioral problems and people labeled us bad children, not children who saw some things that happened and really needed help.

    "I remember always crying, all the time. I feel like no one understood what happened. I remember drawing pictures with me with a gun to my head and with blood all around. I remember I didn't want to live."

    Hopkins, who came home from school to find the apartment ringed in crime-scene tape, is married, a mother of four, has a home in Raleigh and is a senior in education at LeMoyne-Owen College.

    Chambers works two jobs and has recently completed studies to be an aircraft mechanic. He has a young son and is engaged to be married.

    They say their brother and one of their sisters are still struggling. The youngest boy, now 20, dropped out of school in the 12th grade and has joined Job Corps. One of the girls, Jamaicah Chambers, 21, has two children, while the other, now 23, still has trouble dealing with the day she couldn't get her dead mother to wake up.

    "I think the death affected everyone differently," says Hopkins, who often worried that Nesbit would come back and get them, too. "It made some want to be responsible, and it made others a little irresponsible."

    Dr. John Hutson said counseling is important for children -- even as young as 3 -- who have gone through a trauma that no one else wants to hear about.

    "Part of counseling is to educate them on what to expect down the road in terms of how it's going to affect them in trusting others, in social situations, noise and things like that," said Hutson, a clinical psychologist.

    "It's very much akin to a soldier with post traumatic stress disorder. They're going to have flashbacks, they're going to have nightmares, they may be uncomfortable around certain people.

    Even just the date can set off things."

    Chambers said he was a nervous child, bullied in school and always fearful that he would happen upon his mother's body again.

    He recalls often being locked in his room by a relative who did not understand his nervousness, which sometimes caused him to shake back and forth.

    "All I used to think about was my mama and wishing she was alive," says Chambers, who recalls that the woman the children called 'Myra' came to him in a dream. "My mother was really pretty and she had a really pretty smile. When she smiled at me in my dream I tried to pull her out of my dream.

    "When my mother was alive I had asthma and she kept me with her all the time. I had a really close bond with her. I had her one day and the next day she was gone."

    His father was young when Cannon was killed, but Chambers moved in with him at age 12 and credits his father with providing some stability in his life.

    "When they were young they had a lot of bad nightmares," says Jerrel Chambers, father of the three youngest children and a detention officer at Juvenile Court. "It affected them all differently. I honestly believe if their mother was here, they all would be more successful like Jamerius. It's not a day goes by that all of us don't think about her."

    Jamerius Chambers said he once wrote to his mother's killer, but never heard back.

    "I always was searching for answers and I didn't know what answers I was looking for. ... I never knew why it happened, but I don't wish death upon him. That was about two decades ago and I don't think he's the same person he was back then."

    http://www.commercialappeal.com/news...till-remember/
    Last edited by Helen; 06-21-2014 at 09:39 PM.
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
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    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
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  4. #4
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Tennessee Supreme Court denies new trial for death row inmate

    The Tennessee Supreme Court denied a death row inmate’s request for a new murder trial despite his claim that his defense attorney did not adequately represent him during the first trial.

    Clarence Nesbit was convicted of fatally shooting Miriam Cannon in her Memphis apartment on May 20, 1993. He was sentenced to death in 1995.

    Nesbit’s sentence and conviction were upheld on appeal. In his 1999 petition for post-conviction relief, he asserted that his attorney did not properly prepare for trial and failed to explain his plea agreement in a timely manner.

    In 2009 a post-conviction court ruled Nesbit was not entitled to a new trial, but awarded him a new sentencing hearing.

    While the state appeals court upheld that ruling, the state Supreme Court disagreed this week that any failures committed by Nesbit’s attorney had an effect on the jury’s verdict.

    The case is set to return to the trial court for a new sentencing hearing.

    http://www.commercialappeal.com/news...nmate_39966117
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  5. #5
    Senior Member CnCP Addict maybeacomedian's Avatar
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    "Falanga" aka "Foot Whipping" (torture method)

    Foot whipping or bastinado is a form of corporal punishment in which the soles (usually the vaults or arches) of a person's bare feet are beaten. The strokes are typically applied with an implement in the type of a rod or cane and repeated a varying number of times.

    It is also referred to as foot/feet caning, sole caning, sole beating or foot bottom caning. The particular Middle East method is called falaka,[1] also spelled falaqa, falanga or phalanga, derivative from the Greek term falange. The contemporary German term is Bastonade, derivative from the Italian verb bastonare (to beat), in former times also Sohlenstreich (lit. the sole strike). In China it is referred to as jiao xing.


    .....

    (read more here) : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_whipping

  6. #6
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    In today's orders, the United States Supreme Court declined to review Nesbit's petition for certiorari.

    Lower Ct: Supreme Court of Tennessee, Western Division
    Case Nos.: (W2009-02101-SC-R11-PD)
    Decision Date: November 14, 2014

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/search.a...es/14-8461.htm

  7. #7
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    So the TDOC has Nesbit being back on death row

    https://apps.tn.gov/foil/details.jsp

    Here is his new mugshot from June

    9B4946C8-1BDC-428A-9756-E7F7D6F684EF.jpeg

    Can anyone confirm?
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  8. #8
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    The Tennessean posted a list of all TN inmates in Feb 2020, and he is on it.

    https://www.tennessean.com/picture-g...h-row/6756355/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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