Abdur'Rahman v. State
| Decision Date | 30 November 2020 |
| Docket Number | M2019-01708-CCA-R3-PD |
| Citation | 648 S.W.3d 178 |
| Parties | Abu-Ali ABDUR'RAHMAN v. STATE of Tennessee |
| Court | Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals |
Herbert H. Slatery III, Attorney General and Reporter; Andrée Sophia Blumstein, Solicitor General; Leslie E. Price, Senior Deputy Attorney General; Zachary T. Hinkle, Deputy Attorney General; Glenn R. Funk, District Attorney General, for the appellant, State of Tennessee.
David R. Esquivel, Michael C. Tackeff, Kelley J. Henry, Katherine M. Dix, and Bradley A. MacLean, Nashville, Tennessee, for the appellee, Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman.
Lucille A. Jewel and Stephen Ross Johnson, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the Amicus Curiae, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Donald Capparella and Tyler Chance Yarbro, Nashville, Tennessee; and Lawrence J. Fox and Susan Martyn, New Haven, Connecticut, for the Amicus Curiae, the Ethics Bureau at Yale.
L. Webb Campbell II, William L. Harbison, Eric G. Osborne, and Amy R. Mohan, Nashville, Tennessee, for the Amicus Curiae, former Tennessee state and federal prosecutors Ed Yarbrough, Bill Farmer, Hal Hardin, Charles Fels, and Tom Dillard.
Jonathan Harwell, Knoxville, Tennessee; Shane Ramsey and Woods Drinkwater, Nashville, Tennessee, for the Amicus Curiae, the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Gregory D. Smith, J. David Wicker, and Alexandra T. MacKay, Nashville, Tennessee, for the Amici Curiae, the Tennessee Conference of the NAACP and the Napier-Looby Bar Association.
This is a State appeal, filed by the State Attorney General and Reporter, from an Agreed Order ("AO") entered between Petitioner, Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman, and the District Attorney General for Davidson County. The AO amended Petitioner's capital sentence to life imprisonment. Petitioner filed a motion to reopen his post-conviction proceedings based upon the ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Foster v. Chatman , 578 U.S. 488, 136 S. Ct. 1737, 195 L.Ed.2d 1 (2016). The post-conviction court granted the motion and set the matter for a hearing. At the hearing, the parties presented to the court an AO stating that Petitioner's sentence would be amended in exchange for his waiving and dismissing all post-conviction claims. The post-conviction court accepted the AO and subsequently entered an amended judgment of conviction. The State appealed, arguing that the post-conviction court lacked jurisdiction to accept the AO and amend Petitioner's sentence. Petitioner responds that this Court lacks jurisdiction to hear this appeal because the State consented to the AO in the post-conviction court, thereby foreclosing any right to appeal. We have thoroughly considered the briefs and arguments of both parties as well as the amici curiae. We conclude that the State has a right to appeal to challenge the jurisdiction of the post-conviction court. We also conclude that the post-conviction court lacked jurisdiction to accept the AO and to amend Petitioner's final judgment of conviction because it did not comply with the statutory requirements for granting relief under the Post-Conviction Procedure Act. Therefore, we vacate both the AO and the amended judgment of conviction and remand this case to the post-conviction court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Well over 33 years ago, Petitioner, Abu-Ali Abdur'Rahman (formerly known as James Lee Jones, Jr.), was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder, assault with intent to commit first-degree murder, and armed robbery for the stabbing attacks of Patrick Daniels and Norma Norman. Petitioner was sentenced to death for the murder conviction and consecutive life sentences for the two other convictions. See State v. Jones , 789 S.W.2d 545 (Tenn. 1990), cert. denied, Jones v. Tennessee , 498 U.S. 908, 111 S.Ct. 280, 112 L.Ed.2d 234 (1990). As relevant to this appeal, Petitioner raised a claim on direct appeal that the prosecutor's use of peremptory strikes against African-American jurors violated his constitutional rights under Batson v. Kentucky , 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). Jones , 789 S.W.2d at 548-49. The Tennessee Supreme Court found that "[t]here was no pattern of strikes against black jurors" and that "[t]here was no indication of any discriminatory purpose in the strikes" given the prosecutor's "neutral reasons for the exercise of its challenges." Id. at 549. The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed Petitioner's convictions and sentences. Id. at 553.
Petitioner subsequently filed a petition for post-conviction relief, the denial of which was affirmed by this Court on appeal. See James Lee Jones, Jr. v. State , No. 01C01-9402-CR-00079, 1995 WL 75427, at *1 (Tenn. Crim. App. Feb. 23, 1995), perm. app. denied (Tenn. Aug. 28, 1995), cert. denied, Jones v. Tennessee , 516 U.S. 1122, 116 S.Ct. 933, 133 L.Ed.2d 860 (1996). Petitioner also unsuccessfully sought federal habeas corpus relief, primarily raising claims of ineffective assistance of counsel and the prosecutor's withholding of certain evidence in violation of Brady v. Maryland , 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). See Abdur'Rahman v. Bell , 226 F.3d 696 (6th Cir. 2000) ; Abdur'Rahman v. Colson , 649 F.3d 468 (6th Cir. 2011) ; Abdur'Rahman v. Carpenter , 805 F.3d 710 (6th Cir. 2015).
On June 24, 2016, Petitioner filed a motion to reopen post-conviction proceedings in the Davidson County Criminal Court. See T.C.A. § 40-30-117. Petitioner asserted three claims based on recent United States Supreme Court cases. First, and as relevant to this appeal, Petitioner asserted that Foster v. Chatman , 578 U.S. 488, 136 S. Ct. 1737, 195 L.Ed.2d 1 (2016), established a new rule of constitutional law regarding a prosecutor's use of peremptory strikes against potential jurors that are "motivated in substantial part by discriminatory intent" and that this rule was retroactively applicable. Like the defendant in Foster , Petitioner obtained the prosecutor's jury selection notes after his trial and direct appeal, which Petitioner alleged contradicted the prosecutor's race-neutral reasons for the strikes given at trial. The other claims raised in Petitioner's motion were that capital punishment should be declared unconstitutional because it is inconsistent with the reasoning of the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges , 576 U.S. 644, 135 S.Ct. 2584, 192 L.Ed.2d 609 (2015), and with Justice Breyer's dissent in Glossip v. Gross , 576 U.S. 863, 135 S.Ct. 2726, 192 L.Ed.2d 761 (2015). On September 23, 2016, Petitioner filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus as a supplement to his motion to reopen, asserting that capital punishment should be deemed unconstitutional based on the historical record of its application in Tennessee since 1977 showing that it "operates in an arbitrary and capricious manner" and that it is not consistent with the "evolving standards of decency." The State did not file a response to either of Petitioner's pleadings.
On October 5, 2016, the post-conviction court entered an order entitled "Order Granting ‘Motion to Reopen Post-Conviction Petition’ in Part and Denying in Part." The post-conviction court denied Petitioner's motion with respect to his claims based on Obergefell and Glossip , concluding that they did not establish new rules of constitutional law that would entitle Petitioner to relief.1 The post-conviction court also denied Petitioner's petition for writ of habeas corpus. However, the post-conviction court stated that it would "hold an evidentiary hearing in order to make a determination as to issue one, whether Petitioner is entitled to relief under Foster v. Chatman ." The post-conviction court stated that the hearing would focus on whether Foster created a new rule of law regarding peremptory strikes of potential jurors that were "motivated in substantial part by discriminatory intent" or whether the new rule was actually announced in Snyder v. Louisiana , 552 U.S. 472, 128 S.Ct. 1203, 170 L.Ed.2d 175 (2008). If Snyder controlled, the post-conviction court would determine whether Petitioner waived his claim because he failed to raise it for eight years.
On August 28, 2019,2 Petitioner filed a "Pre-Hearing Memorandum" detailing his claim that " Foster formulated a change in the evidentiary and procedural rules for adjudicating a jury race discrimination claim" from that originally established in Batson . After describing the development of United States Supreme Court's jurisprudence from Batson through the recent decision in Flowers v. Mississippi , ––– U.S. ––––, 139 S.Ct. 2228, 204 L.Ed.2d 638 (2019), Petitioner argued that " Foster stands in an important position in the Court's development of the law in this area" because it allowed a defendant to raise a jury discrimination claim that had been previously adjudicated on direct appeal and to support the claim with "newly discovered evidence from outside the trial record – specifically in this case, the prosecutor's notes taken during jury selection[.]" Additionally, Petitioner asserted that Foster retroactively applied to post-conviction proceedings the standard established in Snyder , a direct appeal, that a defendant must show that the prosecutor's strike of a juror was "motivated in substantial part by discriminatory intent." See Foster , 136 S. Ct. at 1754 (citing Snyder , 552 U.S. at 485, 128 S.Ct. 1203 ). The memorandum then detailed Petitioner's factual allegations regarding the peremptory strikes of specific African-American jurors by the prosecutor in his case.
An evidentiary hearing was held on August 28, 2019, consisting of arguments by counsel for both parties. Petitioner's counsel submitted multiple exhibits, including the prosecutor's...
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