USA - Tennessee. Judge R. Jerry Beck has vacated the death sentence of Steven James Rollins.

Sullivan County Criminal Court judge R. Jerry Beck has vacated the death sentence of Steven James Rollins. Rollins was sentenced to death on June 21, 2003 (see) for killing James T. Bussell, 81, during a robbery on August 22, 2001. In a petition for post-conviction relief, Rollins’ new lawyers grilled their predecessors about their defense in the guilty and penalty phases. The post-conviction hearings revealed potential mitigating evidence that Rollins’ attorneys did not present to the jury, which Beck determined was not enough to budge the conviction but sufficiently grave to "warrant a new sentencing hearing."