Taxpayers paying both teams in protracted death penalty battle
Killer Michael Rimmer probably won’t be executed anytime soon.
Tennessee’s government had scheduled his death for May 10, but the execution was called off, and the judge overseeing the case says the next round of appeals could take years to resolve.
The renewed fight illustrates the additional costs and legal complexities that the death penalty creates. Rimmer’s case has already lasted more than 24 years, with two full trials and a resentencing.
In the new round of appeals, taxpayers will fund the team of lawyers that’s trying to save Rimmer from execution.
And taxpayers will also fund another team of lawyers that’s trying to execute him.
Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Chris Craft explained Rimmer’s renewed appeals process in an interview with The Commercial Appeal. He said Rimmer recently filed a new petition for post-conviction relief.
“It usually takes a year or two to get these things done, because they’re gonna have witnesses and investigators come and amendments to the petition. Rimmer filed the petition himself, so they’re gonna have to file an amended petition. So it’s gonna take a while.”
Rimmer has been found guilty in the killing of his ex-girlfriend Ricci Ellsworth, who disappeared in 1997 from her job at a Memphis motel. She is presumed dead, but her body was never found.
Rimmer’s case has been extensively litigated for decades, including a jury trial in 1998 that led to his conviction and death sentence. Then an appeals court upheld the conviction but awarded him a new trial that focused only on his sentence: a jury again gave him the death penalty in 2004.
He won a second full trial after a judge concluded his defense counsel was ineffective and the prosecution didn’t turn over evidence that could have helped Rimmer’s case. In 2016, his case went to a new jury, which again convicted him and sentenced him to death. Craft, the judge, oversaw the 2016 jury trial.
Rimmer has filed multiple appeals since then. The Court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee at Jackson affirmed the Shelby County court’s decisions in 2019. The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed the death sentence in 2021. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review Rimmer’s case in 2022.
Rimmer’s new petition for post-conviction relief is dated March 28 and was entered into the court record on April 7.
Until now, Rimmer had not filed this particular type of post-conviction legal motion related to his latest conviction in 2016, the judge said.
Rimmer’s legal team wrote in this new motion that his trial lawyers were ineffective, falling short in their handling of various witnesses and legal issues.
The petition says Rimmer’s recent round of appeals didn’t address the issue of the effectiveness of his lawyers in the 2016 trial.
The Commercial Appeal’s efforts to reach trial attorney Robert Parris were unsuccessful this week.
Rimmer’s legal team raised other issues, including that the second trial in 2016 violated Rimmer’s constitutional right against double jeopardy — being tried twice for the same crime.
The judge said that as soon as Rimmer filed the March 28 motion, Tennessee law compelled him to issue a stay of execution.
The judge signed the stay of execution on April 11. On the same day, the judge also appointed the Nashvillebased Office of the Post-conviction Defender to represent Rimmer during the appeals process.
In 1995, the Tennessee legislature had created the Office of the Post-conviction Defender to represent any person convicted and sentenced to death who is unable to hire a lawyer because of poverty.
(Rimmer’s petition says lawyers from this office already helped him draft the petition, which is written in precise legal language.)
As the Nashville team argues that the legal team that handled Rimmer’s latest trial was ineffective, the prosecution will likely argue that Rimmer’s trial team was, in fact, effective and his conviction was valid, the judge said.
Because of the charges of prosecutorial misconduct, the Shelby County District Attorney’s office didn’t prosecute the 2016 trial against Rimmer — special prosecutors were brought in from outside the county.
Now, the Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference must find a prosecution team from outside Shelby County to handle the death penalty appeal, the judge said.
Rimmer’s case had been scheduled to be heard in court on Friday according to online records, but the judge said he’s resetting the meeting until May 20. “Not for anybody to appear for a hearing or anything, but just for us to find out who the prosecutor is,” the judge said.
The two sides will trade legal filings, the judge said. “And then I’m going to try to get it set for a hearing. But that’s going to be probably this fall or maybe in the spring.”
Investigative reporter Daniel Connolly welcomes tips and comments