Miller v. State

• Citation: 54 S.W.3d 743
• Decision Date: 29 August 2001
• Docket Number: 98-00247
• Parties: DAVID EARL MILLER v. STATE OF TENNESSEEIN THE SUPREME COURT OF TENNESSEE AT KNOXVILLE
• Court: Supreme Court of Tennessee

DAVID EARL MILLER v STATE OF TENNESSEE

No. E1998-00247-SC-R11-PD

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF TENNESSEE AT KNOXVILLE

May 3, 2001 Session

Filed August 29, 2001

Appeal by permission from the Court of Criminal Appeals Criminal Court for Knox County, No. 47700

Ray Jenkins, Judge

We granted petitioner, David Earl Miller's application for permission to appeal to determine whether this Court's decision in State v. Brown, 836 S.W.2d 530 (Tenn. 1992) created a new state constitutional rule regarding the elements of deliberation and premeditation. Petitioner claims that Brown created a new state constitutional rule and that the jury instructions given at his initial trial violated this rule by relieving the prosecution of its burden to prove the elements of premeditation and deliberation beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, the petitioner argues that his conviction of first-degree murder was not supported by sufficient proof. After due consideration, we conclude that Brown did not announce a new state constitutional rule, did not implicate any constitutional right, is not retroactive, and may not serve as the basis for post-conviction relief. Accordingly, we conclude that the petitioner's complaint about the jury instructions given at his initial trial has been waived because it was not raised on direct appeal and that his complaint about the sufficiency of the evidence to support premeditation and deliberation was previously determined by this Court on direct appeal. Accordingly, the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals is affirmed.

Tenn. R. App. P. 11; Judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals Affirmed

Frank F. Drowota, III, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which E. Riley Anderson, C.J., Adolpho A. Birch Jr., Janice M. Holder and William M. Barker, JJ., joined..

Mark Stephens, John Halstead, and Paula R. Voss, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the appellant, David Earl Miller.

Paul G. Summers, Attorney General & Reporter; Michael E. Moore, Solicitor General; Daryl J. Brand, Associate Solicitor General; Randall E. Nichols, District Attorney General; and Robert L. Jolley, Jr., Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

W. Mark Ward, Memphis, Tennessee, for Amicus Curiae, Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

OPINION

I. Background

The petitioner, David Earl Miller, was convicted of first-degree murder for the May 1981 killing of 23-year-old victim, Lee Standifer.¹ Upon finding that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel in that it involved torture or depravity of mind, the jury imposed a sentence of death. This Court affirmed Miller's conviction on direct appeal, but reversed the sentence of death and remanded for a new sentencing hearing because the prosecution had been erroneously permitted to introduce evidence about Miller's prior arrests which had not resulted in convictions. State v. Miller, 674 S.W.2d 279 (Tenn. 1984). In February 1987, a new sentencing hearing was conducted, and the jury again sentenced Miller to death based upon its finding that the murder was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel in that it involved torture or depravity of mind. On direct appeal, this Court affirmed the sentence of death. State v. Miller, 771 S.W.2d 401 (Tenn. 1989). Thereafter, Miller filed a timely petition seeking post-conviction relief.² Counsel for Miller presented his claims for post-conviction relief to the trial court. No witnesses were called at the hearing; however, transcripts of the 1982 trial and the 1987 sentencing hearing were introduced in support of Miller's claims. The trial court denied Miller's petition. Miller appealed, raising eight issues, including his claims that the jury instructions given at his trial relieved the State of its burden to prove premeditation and deliberation beyond a reasonable doubt and that the evidence was insufficient to prove premeditation and deliberation beyond a reasonable doubt. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the trial court's decision denying post-conviction relief. Thereafter, we granted Miller's application for permission to appeal and now affirm the judgments of the trial court and the Court of Criminal Appeals.

II. Standard of Review

The standard of appellate review of post-conviction proceedings is familiar. We review findings of fact de novo with a presumption that the findings are correct unless the evidence preponderates against those findings. See Fields v. State, 40 S.W.3d 450, 456-57 (Tenn. 2001); Henley v. State, 960 S.W.2d 572, 579 (Tenn. 1997). We review questions of law de novo with no presumption of correctness. Fields, 40 S.W.3d at 456-57.

III. Jury Instructions and Sufficiency of the Evidence

Relying upon this Court's decision in State v. Brown, 836 S.W.2d 530 (Tenn. 1992), Miller raises two related issues. First, he alleges that the jury instructions given at his trial relieved the State of its burden to prove premeditation and deliberation beyond a reasonable doubt and therefore violated his right to due process under the United States Constitution. See In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358, 90 S. Ct. 1068, 25 L. Ed. 2d 368 (1970). Miller also argues that the prejudicial effect of these unconstitutional jury instructions is clear because the evidence was insufficient for any rational trier of fact to find the essential elements of deliberation, premeditation, and lack of heat of passion beyond a reasonable doubt. Miller argues that these issues are proper grounds for consideration in a post-conviction proceeding because this Court's decision in Brown announced a new constitutional rule that must be retroactively applied because it enhances the fact-finding process of the trial. See Meadows v. State, 849 S.W.2d 748, 754 (Tenn. 1993) (discussing the circumstances that will require retroactive application of new state constitutional rules). Apparently recognizing that there is no precedent supporting his position, Miller says that the Court of Criminal Appeals in this case and in prior decisions has dealt only with the retroactivity of Brown's disapproval and abandonment of the "premeditation can be formed in an instant" jury instruction and has failed to address the retroactivity of the core issue of Brown: how to properly define deliberation apart from premeditation.

The State argues that Miller's complaint about the jury instruction is waived because it was not raised on direct appeal. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-30-112(b)(1) (repealed 1995).³ The State also argues that the sufficiency of the evidence to establish premeditation and deliberation may not be raised in this post-conviction action because it was previously determined by this Court in Miller's direct appeal. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-30-112(a) (repealed 1995); Miller, 674 S.W.2d at 282-83. The State also argues that Brown did not announce a new state constitutional rule, did not implicate any constitutional right, is not retroactive, and may not serve as the basis for post-conviction relief. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-30-105 (repealed 1995);⁴ Harris v. State, 947 S.W.2d 156, 174 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1996). Finally, the State asserts that even if these claims are considered on the merits Miller is entitled to no relief because the jury instructions given at his trial accurately stated the law and because the evidence offered sufficiently established premeditation and deliberation.

We begin our analysis with Brown, in which this Court found that the evidence was insufficient to establish deliberation and premeditation and modified the defendant's conviction from first- to second-degree murder. Id. at 537. In so holding, we reviewed many Tennessee appellate court decisions and concluded that some of those decisions had blurred the distinction between premeditation and deliberation the essential elements of first degree murder. Id. at 537-44. We emphasized that "the courts of Tennessee should adhere to long-established rules of law and that we should abandon the modern tendency to muddle the line between first- and second-degree murder." Id. at 542-43. We found support for this view in the 1989 statute,⁵ which had included both premeditation and deliberation in the definition of first-degree murder. Id. As a result, we concluded that "it is prudent to abandon an instruction that tells the jury that 'premeditation may be formed in an instant.'" Brown, 836 S.W.2d at 543. We also overruled prior case law to the extent it had interpreted the fact of "repeated blows" to constitute sufficient circumstantial evidence of premeditation and deliberation in and of itself. Id. at 543-44.

In Brown, contrary to Miller's assertion, we did not announce a new rule of constitutional law. In fact, we did not so much as refer to the state or federal constitution in our discussion of the sufficiency of the evidence issue. We also did not declare or imply that the potentially confusing "premeditation may be formed in an instant" instruction infringed upon a defendant's constitutional rights. Finally, we neither declared nor implied that the decision could or should be applied to invalidate every first-degree murder conviction that had been previously obtained. Indeed, the summary in Brown indicates the straightforward and routine nature of our holding:

[W]e do not condone the homicide in this case, or the sustained abuse of the defenseless victim, Eddie Brown. We simply hold that in order to sustain the defendant's conviction, the proof must conform to the statute. Because the state has failed to establish sufficient evidence of first-degree murder, we reduce the defendant's conviction to second degree murder and remand the case for resentencing.

Id. at 544 (emphasis added). In Brown we simply reiterated that Tennessee law had for many years required proof of both premeditation and deliberation to sustain a conviction of first-degree murder, and we repudiated any prior, aberrant decisions blurring that dual requirement. To avoid...