On Sunday morning, February 16, 1997, sixteen-year-old Sarah Jackson and twenty-five-year-old Steve Hampton were shot and killed as they prepared to open the Captain D’s restaurant on Lebanon Road in Donelson, Tennessee. Steve was the manager of the restaurant; Sarah was a high school student working part-time at the restaurant. An area director for Captain D’s spoke with Steve on the telephone around 8:15 to 8:30 a.m. that morning. Over an hour later, around 9:45 to 10 a.m., an employee arrived for work but was unable to enter the restaurant because the doors were locked. He telephoned the Captain D’s from a neighboring restaurant and got a busy signal. When he called a second time a few minutes later, no one answered. Believing something was wrong, he contacted another Captain D’s employee whose father was a Metro police officer. The employee’s father arrived at the scene and, after the assistant manager of Captain D’s unlocked the door, entered the restaurant between 11 a.m. and noon to find Steve Hampton and Sarah Jackson dead, lying face down on the floor inside the restaurant’s walk-in cooler. The victims had been shot execution-style while lying on the floor. Steve had been shot twice in the back of the head and once in the back. Sarah had been shot four times in the head and once in the back. According to the medical examiner, two of Sarah’s head wounds were fatal, but the two other head wounds were superficial, and the shot to her back was not immediately incapacitating. If these less serious wounds were inflicted first, the medical examiner testified Sarah may have been able to move; and, in fact, a blood pattern of Sarah’s gloved hand on shelving near, but above, her body indicated that Sarah had attempted to pull herself up from the floor after she was shot. The victims were shot with a .32 caliber weapon, probably a revolver. $7140, including $250 in coins, was taken in the robbery. Steve’s wallet, which contained $600 that he intended to use to pay rent, also was missing. The police first considered Paul Reid a suspect in this crime on June 12, 1997, after his arrest in Cheatham County for allegedly attempting to kidnap the manager of a Shoney’s restaurant. From this arrest, the police obtained Reid’s fingerprints and photograph. Although none of Reid’s fingerprints were found at Captain D’s, several items belonging to Steven Hampton were discovered one day after the murders lying alongside Ellington Parkway, a four-lane highway in East Nashville. Among the items found was a movie rental card belonging to Steve. Reid’s right thumbprint was found on this card. The area where Steve’s belongings were found was 11.5 miles from the crime scene and 1.2 miles from Reid’s home. Police also found several shoe prints inside Captain D’s near the safe. Although the tread design of these shoe prints did not match, the length of these shoe prints was consistent with shoes seized from Reid’s residence. In addition, the State introduced into evidence a photograph, dated July 16, 1996, which showed Reid wearing a pair of dingy white tennis shoes that police had not found in his residence. Two witnesses identified Reid as the man who came by Captain D’s the night before the murders inquiring about a job. They testified that a man came into the restaurant through the exit door around 10 p.m., shortly before closing the night before the murders. This man said he was interested in applying for a part-time job and that he worked at Shoney’s just down the road. The proof showed Reid worked as a cook at a Shoney’s 2.1 miles from these murders. The employees gave the man an employment application and told him that the manager, Steve Hampton, would be working the next day. When the man asked if anyone would be at the restaurant on Sunday morning, Carter told him that Steve would be there but would be busy and unable to talk until approximately 2:45 p.m., after the Sunday lunch rush. The man left in a dark-colored car. About a week after the murders, employees helped police prepare a composite sketch of the man they had seen. In June of 1997 the police showed them a photographic lineup of six individuals, including Reid. One of the employees positively identified Reid as the man who had inquired about a job the night before the murders. A short time later, the other employee saw Reid during a television news report about his arrest. He immediately called the police and informed them that Reid was the man who came into Captain D’s the night before the murders. At trial, he explained that he was sure of this identification because the news report, as opposed to the photographic lineup, enabled him to hear Reid’s voice, see the way his lips moved when he talked, and see the way he walked. Three other people who had been driving by the Captain D’s restaurant on the morning of the murders testified, linking Reid to the murders. A man who was passing by the restaurant at approximately 8:45 a.m., saw a blue Ford station wagon with damage to the left front, and possibly to the left rear, “parked at a funny angle toward the rear of the building.” The proof showed that prior to these murders, Reid drove a light blue 1988 Ford Escort station wagon which had been involved in an auto accident in January of 1997. As a result, the car was appraised by an insurance company on February 3, 1997, and was found to have damage to the left front end. The man testified that Reid’s car in the insurance company’s photographs was similar to the car he observed in the Captain D’s parking lot the morning of the murders. Around 8:50 a.m., a woman was driving by Captain D’s on her way to church when she saw a man, whom she later identified as Steve Hampton, standing inside the doorway of the restaurant talking to a man outside who was holding white paper in his hand. She described the unidentified man as dark-haired and approximately five inches taller than Steve. This description was consistent with Reid who was dark-haired and approximately six feet, three inches tall, as compared to Steve whose height was five feet, eight inches. Around 9:30 a.m., another passerby noticed “a car that sort of looked out of place.” According to him, the small to medium-sized car was parked about a car-length away from the front of the building headed in the opposite direction of the drive-thru arrows painted on the lot. He also noticed a man walking hurriedly away from the restaurant toward the car. When the man stopped at the passenger side of the car and looked up, the man “elevated his face and . . . it seemed like our eyes sort of caught one another, and when he saw that I was watching him, he dropped his head, just completely down in a suspicious way.” The man entered the passenger side of the car. The witness described the man as tall, with a muscular build and large neck, dark eyebrows and dark eyes, a full head of hair which was slicked back. The man was wearing a white shirt, dark pants, and white, “not new,” tennis shoes. He heard about the murders the next day and called the police twice to report what he had seen, but no one contacted him. When he saw Reid on television after his arrest in June of 1997, the witness again called the police and identified Reid as the man he had seen near the Captain D’s on the morning of the murder. On the night of April 23, 1997, Angela Holmes, age twenty-one, and Michelle Mace, age sixteen, were working at a Baskin-Robbins store on Wilma Rudolph Boulevard in Clarksville, Tennessee. The store regularly closed at 10:00 p.m. At around 10:10 p.m., Michelle's brother arrived at the store to pick up his sister. He noticed that Angela Holmes’ car was in the parking lot and that the lights inside the store were on. He entered the store through an unlocked door and found no one inside. He called 911. Officers were dispatched to the scene and searched the store. They found the cash register drawer empty, except for some coins, and a safe in an office with the top removed. The victims’ purses were found at the store; no money had been taken from the purses. A mop and bucket were found in the customer area, and the freezer was left open. On the morning of April 24, 1997, the bodies of Angela Holmes and Michelle Mace were found at the Dunbar Cave State Natural Area in Montgomery County, Tennessee, which was between 2.1 and 3.6 miles from the Baskin-Robbins store. Both victims had suffered deep stab wounds to their necks, as well as stab wounds, cuts, and abrasions to other parts of their bodies. Both had bled to death. A witness testified that she had visited with the victims at the Baskin-Robbins store from 9:20 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. on April 23, 1997. At one point, a man in his late twenties or early thirties entered the store and became “obnoxious” and “very loud” about the prices before leaving. As she left the store at 10:00 p.m., the witness saw a “shiny red” car enter the parking lot. Two other witnesses testified about seeing the same car at or near the store. Others testified to seeing a red car near Dunbar Cave around 10:30 p.m. on the night of April 23, 1997. They said they thought it was “odd” because the car was not in a parking space. A serologist and DNA specialist with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation testified that a DNA sample taken from blood found on Reid’s left tennis shoe was consistent with the DNA profile of Angela Holmes. In addition, a DNA sample taken from small blood stains found on the right tennis shoe was consistent with a mixture of two or more donors from which neither Angela Holmes nor Michelle Mace could be excluded. A fiber comparison specialist with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation testified that fibers found on both victims’ clothing were compared to fibers in Reid’s car. The medical examiner testified that Angela died as a result of a stab wound to her neck that went “all the way to her backbone.” The wound, which was consistent with a knife blade of eight or nine inches, transected the carotid artery and jugular vein. He testified that Michelle had suffered fourteen stab wounds, including a fatal stab wound in her neck. He said that a compound incision penetrated Michelle’s backbone, consisted of three changes in direction, and was consistent with a sawing motion. Both victims would have taken five to fifteen minutes to bleed to death and would have been conscious eighty percent of that time. After the delay for Reid granted in June of 2006, the victims' families were frustrated but not surprised. "With all of the appeals he keeps going through and all of the drama he keeps starting, we're just trying to stay positive for each other," said Brenda Sewell, whose brother, Robert Sewell, 23, was shot to death by Reid in a robbery at the Hermitage McDonald's. "We've just got to do what it takes to get by," she said.

On January 15, 1983, Frank Russell returned home from work to discover that his wife, Edith, had been murdered. The Russells rented an apartment at the back of their Chattanooga, Tennessee, house to a tenant who, at that time, was away on vacation, and Mrs. Russell’s body was found inside this apartment. Medical examiners determined that the cause of her death was “massive multiple skull fractures with marked lacerations of the scalp and head, expelling brain tissue and literally crushing the victim’s face and disfiguring her beyond recognition.” Mrs. Russell was last seen that afternoon at a neighborhood market, where witnesses spoke with her between approximately 2:30 and 2:45 p.m. Bags of groceries and ignition keys were found in Mrs. Russell’s car, which was parked in the driveway, when her body was discovered near midnight. Nothing in the record indicates a precise time of death. The logical inference is that Mrs. Russell was killed a short time after purchasing the groceries in the middle of the afternoon, or else she would have taken them and her keys out of her car. Moreover, the porch lights were off. Her husband said she always left the outside lights on for protection. The Russells’ house and the rented apartment were burglarized. Missing items included “a television, two cable television converters, a quartz heater, a Polaroid camera, a silver Cross pen and pencil set, a jeweler’s loop, a jewelry box, antique jewelry, a marble vase, and Mrs. Russell’s purse.” The police later found the quartz heater, the Polaroid camera, the pen and pencil set, and the jeweler’s loop in the residence of Edward Jerome Harbison’s girlfriend who was also co-defendant David Schreane’s sister. The jeweler’s loop was found in Harbison’s shaving kit. In an adjacent unoccupied apartment, the police found Mrs. Russell’s purse, a jewelry box, and two large paper bags containing antique glassware and brassware. The stolen television was found in the residence of Schreane’s girlfriend. Schreane was taken into custody and questioned on February 21, 1983, when he led police to the missing marble vase. Chemical testing later revealed the presence of blood on the vase. Furthermore, debris that was vacuumed from the carpet in Harbison’s car revealed crystalline calcite fragments that were consistent with the marble vase. Harbison also was arrested on February 21, 1983. In a taped statement, he confessed to killing Edith Russell. Harbison stated that after he drove his girlfriend home from work, he and Schreane went to the Russell home, determined that it was empty, and used a screwdriver to break into the residence. While he and Schreane were carrying the stolen items from the house and the apartment to their car, Mrs. Russell returned home. Harbison contended that he thought Mrs. Russell was reaching for a gun, so he grabbed her. He stated that he hit her with the marble vase, “at the most” two times. At his trial, Harbison testified that he had not killed Mrs. Russell and that he was not at the Russell house on the day of the murder. He said that he was at his girlfriend’s home that afternoon and evening. He asserted that his confession was coerced, and that the police had threatened to arrest his girlfriend and take away her children if he did not confess. He further testified that the police had told him what to say and that his taped confession, which was played to the jury, had been altered. Finally, he testified that he had purchased the jeweler’s loop at a pawn shop. Harbison was convicted and sentenced to death