Nichols v. State

• Decision Date: 10 October 2019
• Docket Number: No. E2018-00626-CCA-R3-PD,E2018-00626-CCA-R3-PD
• Parties: HAROLD WAYNE NICHOLS v. STATE OF TENNESSEE
• Court: Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals

HAROLD WAYNE NICHOLS v. STATE OF TENNESSEE

No. E2018-00626-CCA-R3-PD

COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE AT KNOXVILLE

March 26, 2019 Session

October 10, 2019

Appeal from the Criminal Court for Hamilton County

No. 205863

Don R. Ash, Senior Judge

Petitioner, Harold Wayne Nichols, pled guilty to first degree murder in 1990. A jury imposed the death penalty. In June of 2016, Petitioner moved to reopen his post-conviction petition on the basis that the Supreme Court's decision in Johnson v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015), announced a new rule of constitutional law requiring retroactive application. The post-conviction court granted the motion to reopen, but after Petitioner amended his petition and asserted additional claims, the post-conviction court denied relief without a hearing. On appeal, Petitioner argues (1) that the sole aggravating circumstance supporting his death sentence is unconstitutionally vague under Johnson; (2) that a judge, rather than a jury, determined facts in imposing the death penalty in violation of Hurst v. Florida, ___ U.S. ___, 136 S. Ct. 616 (2016), a new rule of constitutional law requiring retroactive application; (3) that the State committed prosecutorial misconduct at Petitioner's sentencing hearing, along with a related ineffective assistance of trial counsel claim; (4) that the post-conviction court erred in canceling the scheduled evidentiary hearing without notice and a fair opportunity to be heard; (5) that the post-conviction court erred in denying the parties' proposed settlement agreement to vacate the death sentence and enter a judgment of life imprisonment; and (6) that Petitioner's death sentence is invalid due to the cumulative effect of the asserted errors. Following our review, we affirm the judgment of the post-conviction court.

Tenn. R. App. P. 3 Appeal as of Right; Judgment of the Criminal Court is Affirmed.

TIMOTHY L. EASTER, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which NORMA MCGEE OGLE and CAMILLE R. MCMULLEN, JJ., joined.

Deborah Y. Drew, Deputy Post-Conviction Defender; Andrew L. Harris, Assistant Post-Conviction Defender, Nashville, Tennessee, for the appellant, Harold Wayne Nichols.

Herbert H. Slatery III, Attorney General and Reporter; Nicholas W. Spangler, Senior Assistant Attorney General; Neal Pinkston, District Attorney General; and Crystle Carrion, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

OPINION

Factual and Procedural Background

On May 9, 1990, Petitioner pled guilty to first degree felony murder, aggravated rape, and first degree burglary with his sentence to be determined by a jury. The Tennessee Supreme Court summarized the evidence presented at the sentencing hearing as follows:

The proof showed that on the night of September 30, 1988, [Petitioner] broke into the house where the 21-year-old-victim, Karen Pulley, lived with two roommates in the Brainerd area of Chattanooga, Tennessee. After finding Pulley home alone in her upstairs bedroom, [Petitioner] tore her undergarments from her and violently raped her. Because of her resistance during the rape, he forcibly struck her at least twice in the head with a two-by-four he had picked up after entering the house. After the rape, [Petitioner], while still struggling with the victim, struck her again several times with great force in the head with the two-by-four. The next morning, one of Karen Pulley's roommates discovered her alive and lying in a pool of blood on the floor next to her bed. Pulley died the next day. Three months after the rape and murder, a Chattanooga police detective questioned [Petitioner] about Pulley's murder while he was in the custody of the East Ridge police department on unrelated charges. It was at this point that [Petitioner] confessed to the crime. This videotaped confession provided the only link between [Petitioner] and the Pulley rape and murder.

The evidence showed that, until his arrest in January 1989, [Petitioner] roamed the city at night and, when "energized," relentlessly searched for vulnerable female victims. At the time of trial, [Petitioner] had been convicted on five charges of aggravated rape involving four other Chattanooga women. These rapes had occurred in December 1988 and January 1989, within three months after Pulley's rape and murder. . . .

State v. Nichols, 877 S.W.2d 722, 726 (Tenn. 1994) (footnotes omitted), cert. denied, 513 U.S. 1114 (1995). In three of those prior rapes, Petitioner had been armed with a weapon (a cord, a knife, and a pistol, respectively), and he caused personal injury to the victim in the fourth. Id.

In support of the death penalty, the State relied upon two aggravating circumstances: (1) that Petitioner had one or more prior convictions for violent felonies, namely the five convictions for aggravated rape, and (2) that the murder occurred during the commission of a felony. See T.C.A. § 39-2-203(i)(2) & (7). The jury imposed the death penalty after finding both aggravating circumstances were proven beyond a reasonable doubt and that the aggravating circumstances outweighed any mitigating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt.¹ On direct appeal, the Tennessee Supreme Court concluded, among other issues, that the application of the felony murder aggravating circumstance was harmless error and affirmed Petitioner's convictions and death sentence. Id. at 738-39.

On April 20, 1995, Petitioner filed a petition for post-conviction relief, raising multiple claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. Following an extensive evidentiary hearing spanning eight days, the post-conviction court upheld Petitioner's convictions and death sentence.² On appeal to this Court, we held that the trial court erred in allowing Petitioner to assert his right against self-incrimination at the post-conviction hearing but affirmed the post-conviction court's denial of relief. Harold Wayne Nichols v. State, E1998-00562-CCA-R3-PD, 2001 WL 55747 (Tenn. Crim. App. Jan. 19, 2001). The Tennessee Supreme Court held that this Court should not have addressed the self-incrimination issue but affirmed the post-conviction court's denial of relief. Nichols v. State, 90 S.W.3d 576 (Tenn. 2002). Petitioner was subsequently unsuccessful in his attempt to seek federal habeas corpus relief. See Nichols v. Heidle, 725 F.3d 516 (6th Cir. 2013), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 704 (2014).

On June 24, 2016, Petitioner filed a motion to reopen his post-conviction petition, alleging that Johnson v. United States announced a new constitutional rule requiring retrospective application. In Johnson, the United States Supreme Court held that the "residual clause" of the Armed Career Criminal Act ("ACCA"), which defined prior violent felony for the purpose of sentence enhancement as an offense that "otherwise involves conduct that presents a serious potential risk of physical injury to another," was void for vagueness. See 135 S. Ct. at 2557-58. Petitioner argued that pursuant to theruling in Johnson, Tennessee's prior violent felony aggravating circumstance - the sole aggravating circumstance supporting his death sentence - was similarly void for vagueness. On September 29, 2016, the State filed a response to the motion to reopen, arguing that the ruling in Johnson did not apply to the language of Tennessee's prior violent felony aggravator, which was more akin to the "elements clause" of the ACCA that was held to be constitutional in Johnson. See 135 S. Ct. at 2563.

At an October 4, 2016 hearing, the post-conviction court found that Petitioner had stated a "colorable claim" for reopening post-conviction proceedings. In its order granting the motion to reopen, the post-conviction court noted that Petitioner's case was unusual due to the timing of his offense and the amendment of the sentencing statutes in 1989. Even though the pre-1989 statute³ should have applied to Petitioner's case, the jury was actually instructed on the post-1989 aggravating factor.⁴ The post-conviction court noted that challenges to the post-1989 aggravating factor "would likely fail to state a claim in a motion to reopen" because it specifically referred to the "statutory elements" of the prior offense, similar to the "elements clause" that was upheld in Johnson. However, the post-conviction court found that the pre-1989 aggravating factor "contained language which arguably was similar to the federal statutory clause recently found unconstitutionally vague in Johnson." The post-conviction court stated that its finding that Petitioner's motion to reopen stated a colorable claim was based in part on the "alleged lack of guidance regarding the trial court's application of the pre-1989 prior violent felony conviction statutory aggravating circumstance" as well as "upon the differing conclusions federal and state courts have reached in applying the Johnson holding to non-ACCA cases." The order directed Petitioner's counsel "to investigate all possible constitutional grounds for relief for the purpose of filing an amended petition" and that the amended petition should address "any additional issues counsel deems necessary."

On January 12, 2017, Petitioner filed an amendment to the post-conviction petition reasserting the Johnson claim as well as adding the following additional claims: (1) that Petitioner's death sentence was invalid under the United States Supreme Court's decision in Hurst v. Florida, a new rule of constitutional law requiring retrospective application, because a judge made findings of fact rather than the jury; (2) that the State committed prosecutorial misconduct during closing argument at the sentencing hearing by alluding to the possibility of Petitioner's release if the death penalty were not imposed as well as a related claim that trial counsel were ineffective for failing to object to the argument andfailing to interview jurors regarding the effect of the argument; (3) that Tennessee's death penalty system is "broken"; and (4) that Petitio...