On October 5, 2026, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals ruled in *State of Tennessee v. Samuel Ward, Jr.* (No. W2025-01186-CCA-R3-CD) that a person's biological sex can be relevant to a claim of self-defense. The court called it "an issue of first impression" in Tennessee.
The facts, as described in the opinion
On June 29, 2022, Samuel Ward Jr. called Memphis police to report that he had shot someone. He told officers that he and a friend had argued and that the friend pulled a gun on him; he said he fired back while falling down a staircase.
Police found Paris Lee, 36, dead at the bottom of the stairs inside his home, with a handgun nearby. Lee had six gunshot wounds. The autopsy recorded his height as 5 feet 11 inches and his weight as 262 pounds. A state firearms examiner matched seven casings to Ward's gun and one to Lee's.
Lee was a trans-identified male. The prosecution's pretrial motion stated that Lee was born male and had identified and presented as female for many years, and that Ward and Lee had been in a sexual relationship for at least two years, with Ward aware of Lee's sex.
The trial court's ruling
Prosecutors asked the Shelby County Criminal Court to exclude any reference to Lee's sex, arguing it would confuse the issues and could prejudice the jury. The defense argued Lee's sex was relevant to self-defense, citing differences in strength between males and females, and to Ward's credibility if he testified.
The trial judge granted the motion, saying, "A deadly weapon is a deadly weapon is a deadly weapon." The court required everyone to refer to Lee as "Ms. Lee," and the jury saw crime scene and autopsy photos and an autopsy report redacted to remove information about Lee's sex.
Ward did not testify. He told the court, "I would like to testify if I could tell the whole truth," which he explained meant that Lee "was born a male." The jury convicted Ward of voluntary manslaughter, and he was sentenced to six years.
The appeals court's decision
The three-judge panel (Judge Timothy L. Easter, writing, joined by Presiding Judge Robert W. Wedemeyer and Judge Matthew J. Wilson) held:
- Relevance: Tennessee's test for relevance is low. "There are physical differences between a biological male who is five-feet-eleven and 262 pounds and a biological female who is five-feet-eleven and 262 pounds." The court wrote that "while a gun might equalize differences in physical strength and size, there are other inherent physiological differences between the sexes."
- Misleading the jury: excluding the evidence "left the jury with the impression that a male defendant killed a female victim" and "misled the jury, threatened the fairness of the judicial process, and was prejudicial to Defendant."
- Right to present a defense: Lee's sex "is an objective fact," the evidence was "substantially critical to the defense," and the exclusion denied Ward the opportunity to present his defense. The error was not harmless.
- Bias concerns: the court noted that "the danger of bias, however, ran both ways in this case."
The court found the evidence was otherwise sufficient to support a voluntary manslaughter verdict, and rejected Ward's other claims about closing argument, witness impeachment and sentencing. But because of the evidentiary error, it vacated the conviction and remanded the case for a new trial.
Key terms
- Motion in limine: a pretrial request to keep certain evidence from the jury.
- Rule 403: Tennessee's evidence rule allowing relevant evidence to be excluded only if its value is "substantially outweighed" by dangers such as unfair prejudice or confusion.
- Issue of first impression: a legal question a state's courts have not decided before.
- Remand: sending a case back to the trial court for further proceedings.
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*Cover: Samuel Ward booking photo, Shelby County Sheriff's Office; Paris Lee photo via Facebook.*