The Tennessee Court of Appeals this week denied an appeal by a Sequatchie County woman convicted in 2013 of felony murder in the shooting death of a 54-year-old man whose body was found floating in the Sequatchie River.
Susan Lynette Baker, 38 when she was convicted in the 2014 jury trial, was one of two people charged in the 2011 slaying of Clifford Carden Jr. and was identified and tried as the shooter. Thomas Bryan Bettis, about the same age as Baker, also was charged in the slaying. He was convicted separately in a 2015 guilty plea on charges of facilitation to commit murder and facilitation to commit especially aggravated robbery and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Baker was convicted by a jury on March 6, 2014, of felony murder, especially aggravated robbery and setting fire to personal property. She was sentenced to life in prison on the murder charge, which means she must serve 51 years in prison - when she would be 89 years old - before becoming eligible for parole.
As the trio rode together in a car in the first days of February 2011 in a remote area of southern Sequatchie County, Carden was shot in the head, robbed of pills and more than $1,000 cash, and his body was dumped in the Sequatchie River south of Dunlap, according to trial testimony and court records.
Afterward, Baker and Bettis went on a spending spree, stayed in a local motel, and returned to Carden's home to steal NASCAR memorabilia. The car was found burned miles from the scene where Carden's body was dumped. The murder weapon was recovered in Hamilton County, where Baker had sold it to another person, records show.
Baker's appeal challenged Circuit Court Judge Buddy Perry's ruling on a motion to suppress her videotaped statement to police and evidence related to theft, a surveillance video and an arson charge. The appeal also challenged the sufficiency of evidence.
"We were a little disappointed about the ruling regarding the suppression of her statement, because I believe the evidence showed that she was clearly impaired and a little confused," Baker's lawyer, Dunlap attorney Sam Hudson, said on Tuesday. Hudson argued the same point at a pretrial motion hearing to suppress the statement.
Appellate court justices said there was "nothing in the record that suggests that [Baker] was incapable of voluntarily waiving her rights and providing a statement in this case," documents state.
The appeal also challenged the element of "intent" involved in the robbery charge being transferred to the murder charge.
The felony murder statute in its aim to punish defendants "takes away the element of intent and transfers an intent element in the underlying felony" to the felony murder charge, Hudson said. Hudson argued the transfer of intent from the underlying felony to the murder charge is unconstitutional, although the Tennessee Supreme Court has upheld the transfer of intent as constitutional, he said.
The Court of Appeals in Baker's case ruled that it was bound by those previous state Supreme Court rulings.
Hudson said Baker now has 60 days from Monday to request permission to appeal her case to the state Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has discretion over whether it hears the case.
Contact staff writer Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569. Follow him on Twitter @BenBenton.