Charges Against Howard B. Carrier Don’t Fit Capital Punishment Categories

BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. – The death penalty is off the table for Howard B. Carrier, who is accused of knifing to death his estranged wife’s boyfriend at her Bristol, Tenn., home on Dec. 10, 2008.

Instead, Carrier, 45, of Bristol, Va., will face life in prison if a jury convicts him of first-degree murder in the death of Jeffrey Hugh Washburn,

Sullivan County Assistant District Attorney Barry Staubus said during a Thursday afternoon arraignment in circuit court.

“It’s not in every first-degree murder that you can seek enhanced punishment,” Staubus said after the arraignment.

A life sentence would land Carrier behind bars for 51 years before he became eligible for parole, Staubus said.

Tennessee law primarily reserves the death penalty for murders by violent felons or by suspects who kill to avoid jail; cases involving torture, bombs, terrorism, or mass murder; or those in which the victims are government and court officials, police and emergency workers.

The same criteria also must apply when sentencing someone to life in prison without parole.

Carrier, who pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder Thursday, fits none of those categories, Staubus said.

Following the May 10, 2010, trial, Carrier will again face trial, this time on a charge of attempted first-degree murder in the injury of his estranged wife, Brenda Carrier, who suffered superficial knife cuts in the attack.

Washburn was a 41-year-old car salesman from Gray, Tenn., and the father of a girl who was a week away from celebrating her 17th birthday when he died.

He also was the first person to elicit smiles from Brenda Carrier in years, her two sons said in previous interviews.

Both sons also described Carrier as a man who had just sobered up from a decade-long bout with drug abuse. Although husband and wife had been separated for two years, sobriety and attempts at reconciliation came only after she announced a desire to divorce, the sons said.

On the morning of the attack, the husband and wife were set to appear in Bristol, Tenn., General Sessions Court on charges that he broke into her house Nov. 24.

Carrier will face the domestic assault and especially aggravated burglary charges stemming from that incident after the murder and attempted murder trials are over.

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