Kendrick v. State

• Decision Date: 28 May 2014
• Citation: 454 S.W.3d 450
• Parties: Edward Thomas Kendrick, III v. State of Tennessee
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

454 S.W.3d 450

Edward Thomas Kendrick, III

v.State of Tennessee

Supreme Court of Tennessee, AT KNOXVILLE.

May 28, 2014 Session Heard at Cookeville1

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Gordon W. Smith, Associate Solicitor General; John H. Bledsoe, Senior Counsel; Bill Cox, District Attorney General; and Lance Pope, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellant, State of Tennessee.

Edward T. Kendrick, III, Pro Se, and Ann C. Short, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the appellee, Edward Thomas Kendrick, III.

Stephen Ross Johnson and W. Thomas Dillard, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the Amici Curiae National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

Opinion

William C. Koch, Jr., J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Sharon G. Lee, C.J., Janice M. Holder, Cornelia A. Clark, and Gary R. Wade, JJ., joined.

OPINION

William C. Koch, Jr., J.

This post-conviction appeal involves ineffective assistance of counsel claims made by a prisoner who fatally shot his wife. A Hamilton County jury, rejecting the prisoner's defense that his rifle had malfunctioned and fired accidentally, convicted him of first degree premeditated murder. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his conviction on direct appeal. State v. Kendricks, 947 S.W.2d 875 (Tenn.Crim.App.1996). The prisoner later filed a petition for post-conviction relief in the Criminal Court for Hamilton County alleging, among other things, that his trial counsel had been ineffective because he decided not to seek an expert to rebut the anticipated testimony of the prosecution's expert and because he did not attempt to use an exception to the hearsay rule to introduce statements favorable to the prisoner. The post-conviction court conducted a hearing and denied the petition. The Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the post-conviction court and granted the prisoner a new trial after concluding that trial counsel's representation had been deficient and that, but for these deficiencies, the jury might have convicted the prisoner of a lesser degree of homicide.

Kendrick v. State, No. E2011–02367–CCA–R3–PC, 2013 WL 3306655 (Tenn.Crim.App. June 27, 2013). We granted the State's application for permission to appeal. Trial counsel's decisions not to consult an expert to rebut the anticipated testimony of a prosecution expert and not to attempt to introduce a potentially favorable hearsay statement did not amount to deficient performance that fell below the standard of reasonableness. Accordingly, we reverse the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals and remand for consideration of the prisoner's remaining claims.

I.

Edward T. Kendrick, III and Lisa Kendrick were married and had two children, a three-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter. Their marriage had failed, but they were continuing to live together while they pursued an irreconcilable differences divorce. Mr. Kendrick was angry because he suspected that Ms. Kendrick was having an affair.

Ms. Kendrick worked at a gas station in Chattanooga. At approximately 10:00 p.m. on March 6, 1994, Mr. Kendrick drove the couple's station wagon to the gas station. Their two children were in car seats in the station wagon's rear seat. On the floorboard of the front passenger seat was a loaded Remington Model 7400 .30–06 caliber hunting rifle.

Mr. Kendrick entered the gas station and asked Ms. Kendrick to come out to the car because he had something to show her. When she finished waiting on another customer, Ms. Kendrick followed Mr. Kendrick to the automobile. As Ms. Kendrick approached the automobile, Mr. Kendrick opened the back passenger door and spoke briefly to the children. Then, he opened the front passenger door, picked up the loaded rifle from the floorboard, and walked to the back of the automobile carrying the rifle.

The rifle fired, and a single bullet struck Ms. Kendrick in the chest. She fell backward onto the pavement and died almost instantly. Mr. Kendrick stated later that he stood over Ms. Kendrick's body for a few seconds, looking into her eyes as she died. Then, he got back into the automobile and drove toward the airport.

A bystander followed Mr. Kendrick. At some point during the relatively short drive to the airport, Mr. Kendrick threw his rifle out of the window of the moving automobile. Upon arriving at the airport, Mr. Kendrick used his cellular telephone to call 9–1–1. He told the operator that he had shot his wife. During the same time frame, the bystander who had followed Mr. Kendrick to the airport told a police officer standing outside the airport what had happened at the gas station. Mr. Kendrick was taken into custody.

Early the following morning, Steve Miller, a crime scene investigator, found Mr. Kendrick's rifle on the side of the road. He placed the rifle in the trunk of his automobile and drove to the police station. The rifle fired while Sergeant Miller² was removing it from the trunk of his automobile, striking his left foot.

In November 1994, Mr. Kendrick was tried for the murder of his wife in the Criminal Court for Hamilton County. The State presented twelve witnesses, including Sergeant Miller, the Kendricks' four-year-old daughter, and an expert firearms examiner. Mr. Kendrick presented four witnesses and testified on his own behalf. The State called one rebuttal witness.

The jury convicted Mr. Kendrick of premeditated first degree murder, which carried an automatic life sentence. On direct appeal, the Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the conviction. State v. Kendricks ,³ 947 S.W.2d 875 (Tenn.Crim.App.1996), perm. app. denied (Tenn. 1997).

Mr. Kendrick filed a petition for post-conviction relief in April 1998. The post-conviction court dismissed the petition after deciding that the issues it raised were either waived or previously determined. However, after finding that Mr. Kendrick's ineffective assistance of counsel claims had not been waived, the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the post-conviction court and remanded the case for further proceedings. Kendricks v. State, 13 S.W.3d 401, 405 (Tenn.Crim.App.1999) (No Tenn. R.App. P. 11 application filed).

In March 2000, Mr. Kendrick, aided by counsel, filed an amended petition for post-conviction relief. At a series of hearings in February and March 2011—almost sixteen years after his original trial—Mr. Kendrick raised forty-three claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel, twenty-two claims of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel on direct appeal, and twelve claims of prosecutorial misconduct. He supported these claims with a 631–page memorandum of law.

The post-conviction court declined to grant Mr. Kendrick relief in an order filed on October 13, 2011. On appeal, the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the post-conviction court's dismissal of Mr. Kendrick's petition but limited its decision to only two of the forty-three claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. The appellate court determined that trial counsel's performance had fallen below an objective standard of reasonableness when counsel failed to obtain expert evidence to rebut Mr. Fite's testimony that Mr. Kendrick's rifle could only be fired by pulling the trigger and when counsel failed to attempt to introduce hearsay evidence regarding Sergeant Miller's initial explanation about how he came to be shot by Mr. Kendrick's rifle. Kendrick v. State, No. E2011–02367–CCA–R3–PC, 2013 WL 3306655, at *13–14 (Tenn.Crim.App. June 27, 2013). The appellate court also determined that these errors prejudiced Mr. Kendrick because had it heard such evidence, “it is reasonably likely the jury would have accredited the Petitioner's version of events and convicted him of a lesser degree of homicide.” Kendrick v. State, 2013 WL 3306655, at *17. Based on these conclusions, the Court of Criminal Appeals pretermitted its consideration of Mr. Kendrick's remaining claims. Kendrick v. State, 2013 WL 3306655, at *18.

II.

This claim has been brought under Tennessee's Post–Conviction Procedure Act.⁴ The Act directs Tennessee's courts to grant post-conviction relief to a person “in custody” whose “conviction or sentence is void or voidable because of the abridgement of any right guaranteed by the Constitution of Tennessee or the Constitution of the United States.”Tenn.Code Ann. §§ 40–30–102, –103. The prisoner seeking post-conviction relief bears “the burden of proving the allegations of fact by clear and convincing evidence.” Tenn.Code Ann. § 40–30–110(f) (2012); see also Tenn. Sup.Ct. R. 28, § 8(D)(1) ; Nesbit v. State, 452 S.W.3d 779, 786 (Tenn.2014).

Appellate courts review a post-conviction court's conclusions of law, decisions involving mixed questions of law and fact, and its application of law to its factual findings de novo without a presumption of correctness. Nesbit v. State, 452 S.W.3d at 786 ; Whitehead v. State, 402 S.W.3d 615, 621 (Tenn.2013). However, appellate courts are bound by the post-conviction court's underlying findings of fact unless the evidence preponderates against them. Arroyo v. State, 434 S.W.3d 555, 559 (Tenn.2014) ; Dellinger v. State, 279 S.W.3d 282, 294 (Tenn.2009). Accordingly, appellate courts are not free to re-weigh or re-evaluate the evidence, nor are they free to substitute their own inferences for those drawn by the post-conviction court. State v. Honeycutt, 54 S.W.3d 762, 766 (Tenn.2001). Appellate courts must generally defer to a post-conviction court's findings concerning witness credibility, the weight and value of witness testimony, and the resolution of factual issues presented by the evidence. Whitehead v. State, 402 S.W.3d at 621 ; Momon v. State, 18 S.W.3d 152, 156 (Tenn.1999).

Mr. Kendrick's substantive allegation is that he was denied his constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel. Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution of Tennessee establishes that every criminal defendant has “the right to be heard by himself and his counsel.” Likewise, the Sixth Amendment to the...