Williams v. State
| Docket Number | W2023-00511-CCA-R3-PC |
| Decision Date | 25 January 2024 |
| Parties | G'WAYNE WILLIAMS v. STATE OF TENNESSEE |
| Court | Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals |
Assigned on Briefs January 3, 2024
Appeal from the Circuit Court for Lauderdale County No. 9984 A Blake Neill, Judge [1]
The Petitioner, G'wayne Williams, appeals the Lauderdale County Circuit Court's denial of his post-conviction petition, seeking relief from his convictions for three counts of rape of a child, a Class A felony; three counts of rape, a Class B felony; three counts of statutory rape by an authority figure, a Class C felony; six counts of incest, a Class C felony; three counts of aggravated statutory rape, a Class D felony; and two counts of violating the sex offender registry, a Class E felony, and resulting effective sentence of sixty-four years in confinement. On appeal, the Petitioner contends that trial counsel was ineffective for failing to file a pretrial motion to sever the counts for violating the sex offender registry, which prejudiced the jury, and for failing to make contemporaneous objections and preserve objections to inadmissible evidence in his motion for new trial, which resulted in waiver on direct appeal. Upon review, we affirm the judgment of the post-conviction court.
Tenn R. App. P. 3 Appeal as of Right; Judgment of the Circuit Court Affirmed
Jeremy T. Armstrong (on appeal and at hearing), Dyersburg Tennessee, for the appellant, G'wayne Williams.
Jonathan Skrmetti, Attorney General and Reporter; Benjamin A. Ball, Senior Assistant Attorney General; Mark E. Davidson, District Attorney General; and Julie Pillow, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.
OPINION
Between 2012 and early 2015, the Petitioner repeatedly raped his minor stepson, who was born in December 2001. State v Williams, No. W2020-01608-CCA-R3-CD, 2021 WL 5630887, at *1 (Tenn. Crim. App. Dec. 1, 2021). At the time of the crimes, the Petitioner was a registered sex offender. See State v. Williams, No. W2018-00924-CCA-R3-CD, 2020 WL 211546, at *13 (Tenn. Crim. App. Jan. 14, 2020). In June 2015, the Lauderdale County Grand Jury indicted him for four counts of rape, four counts of aggravated statutory rape, four counts of statutory rape by an authority figure, four counts of sexual battery by an authority figure, forty-five counts of incest, forty-one counts of rape of a child, forty-one counts of aggravated sexual battery, and two counts of violating the requirements of the sex offender registry. Id. at *1. The trial court appointed counsel from the public defender's office, and counsel filed a motion pursuant to Tennessee Rule of Evidence 404(b) to prohibit the State from mentioning any prior bad acts until a hearing could be held. Id. On March 1, 2017, the Petitioner retained counsel who ultimately represented him at trial. Id. n.3. On September 5, 2017, the State filed a pretrial motion pursuant to Tennessee Rules of Evidence 902 and 803(6), requesting to admit the victim's entire hospital record into evidence. Id. Trial counsel filed a response, objecting to portions of the record's admissibility that contained hearsay statements made by the victim and his mother. Id. The trial record did not reflect the disposition of either the Petitioner's or the State's motion. See id.
At trial, multiple witnesses testified for the State, including the then fifteen-year-old victim, his mother, a sexual assault nurse examiner, a juvenile court investigator, and the Petitioner's sex offender registry coordinator. Id. at *2-15. The victim testified about incidents of sexual abuse that occurred in the family home and in the Petitioner's trailer after the Petitioner moved out of the family home. See id. at *7-10. The abuse included fellatio of the victim by the Petitioner, fellatio of the Petitioner by the victim, anal penetration of the victim by the Petitioner, and anal penetration of the Petitioner by the victim. See id. The sexual assault nurse examiner, who examined the victim in January 2017 within seventy-two hours of the last reported incident of penetration, testified that she found physical evidence of recent penetration of the victim's anus and "'repeated trauma over . . . a long period of time[.]'" See id. at *5-6. The Petitioner's sex offender registry coordinator testified that the Petitioner had prior convictions for sexually assaulting an eight-year-old girl in 1991 and a twelve-year-old girl in 1989 and that only his biological children were allowed to live or spend the night in his home. See id. at 13-14. Several witnesses testified for the Petitioner, including his nephew, sister, and brother. See id. at *15-16.
At the conclusion of the proof, the State dismissed some of the charges and made an election of offenses based on eleven separate incidents of abuse for the remaining charges. See id. at *16 &n.10. The jury convicted the Petitioner of three counts of rape, three counts of aggravated statutory rape, three counts of statutory rape by an authority figure, three counts of sexual battery by an authority figure, eleven counts of incest, eight counts of rape of a child, eight counts of aggravated sexual battery, and two counts of violating the sex offender registry for a total of forty-one convictions. See id. at *16-17. After a sentencing hearing in which the trial court merged some of the convictions, the Petitioner received an effective sentence of sixty-four years for three counts of rape, eight counts of rape of a child, and two counts of violating the sex offender registry. Id. at 1718.
On direct appeal of his convictions to this court, the Petitioner claimed, in pertinent part, that the evidence was insufficient to support the convictions; that the trial court erred by admitting evidence of his prior convictions and bad acts; that admission of the victim's medical record into evidence was improper because the record contained hearsay statements and was prepared for purposes of prosecution; and that the trial court erred by failing to sever the two counts for violating the sex offender registry, which prejudiced the jury. Id. at *1. Addressing the sufficiency of the evidence, this court concluded that the State failed to prove the victim's age in three incidents for which the jury had found the Petitioner guilty of rape of a child. See id. at *23-24. As a result, this court reversed and dismissed fifteen convictions related to those incidents. Id. at *24.
Regarding the issue of admitting the Petitioner's prior convictions and bad acts, this court found that although the Petitioner filed a pretrial motion to prohibit prior bad act evidence pursuant to Tennessee Rule of Evidence 404(b), he waived the issue on appeal because the appellate record did not indicate whether the trial court held a hearing on the motion, because trial counsel did not make contemporaneous objections to the prior bad act evidence, and because trial counsel did not raise the issue in the Petitioner's motion for new trial. Id. at *24. The Petitioner requested that this court review the issue for plain error, and this court concluded that the Petitioner was not entitled to relief because the record did not clearly establish what occurred in the trial court. Id. at *25.
At the Petitioner's request, this court also reviewed the issue of the victim's medical record for plain error because the Petitioner did not raise it in his motion for new trial. Id. This court noted that trial counsel objected to the introduction of the victim's medical record during the sexual assault nurse examiner's testimony based on hearsay statements in the medical record but that the trial court overruled the objection based on a "'hearsay exception.'" Id. This court then stated as follows:
Id. This court again found no plain error, concluding that although the medical record contained the names of other possible victims, relief was not necessary to do substantial justice because the victim and his mother were available for cross-examination; trial counsel cross-examined each witness "at some length and brought out inconsistencies" in the victim's statements; and the investigator already had testified about investigating other potential victims, all of whom denied having been abused by the Petitioner. Id. at *25-26. This court then stated, "This inconsistency, which potentially benefitted the [Petitioner], was considered by the jury relative to [the victim's] credibility, and the [Petitioner] has not demonstrated how the outcome of the trial would have been different had the statements been redacted." Id. at *26.
Addressing the trial court's failure to sever the two counts for violating the sex offender registry, this court ruled that the Petitioner waived the issue because he did not file a severance motion before trial. Id. at *28. Finally this court sua sponte found that the...
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