State v. Rogers

The State of Tennessee (plaintiff) prosecuted Matthew Lee Rogers (defendant) for aggravated arson after he deliberately set fire to wall-to-wall carpeting in another man's vacant apartment without permission while other occupants remained elsewhere in the building; though the burned area was not extensive, the fire burned through to the subflooring and required replacing the entire carpet. The statute did not define "structure," and when the deliberating jury asked for clarification of that term, the judge declined to define it, leaving the question to the jurors' common sense; some jurors then consulted an electronic dictionary on their own. The jury convicted Rogers of aggravated arson, and he appealed, challenging both the sufficiency of the evidence that carpeting was part of the building's structure and the trial court's failure to define the term.