Williams v State

• Decision Date: 29 March 2001
• Docket Number: 99-00871
• Citation: 44 S.W.3d 464
• Parties: DEXTER L. WILLIAMS v. STATE OF TENNESSEEIN THE SUPREME COURT OF TENNESSEE AT KNOXVILLE
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

DEXTER L. WILLIAMS v STATE OF TENNESSEE

No. E1999-00871-SC-R11-PC

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF TENNESSEE AT KNOXVILLE

January 3, 2001 Session

Filed March 29, 2001

Appeal By Permission from the Court of Criminal Appeals Criminal Court for Blount County: No. C-9849

Hon. W. Dale Young, Judge

The appellee in this case was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. After the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction, the appellee averred that his trial counsel failed to notify him of counsel's withdrawal from the case, or to explain to him his rights for filing a pro se petition to this Court. Although a Rule 11 petition was eventually filed, it was dismissed as time-barred. Appellee then filed a post-conviction petition for relief, which the trial court dismissed without a full evidentiary hearing because the appellee was unprepared to present evidence. The Court of Criminal Appeals remanded the case for an evidentiary hearing. The State appealed, arguing that the post-conviction petition was untimely pursuant to the 1995 Post-Conviction Procedure Act and should have been dismissed. We agree that the appellee filed his petition after the statute of limitations had run. However, because the appellee may have been deprived by his counsel of a reasonable opportunity to seek post-conviction relief, due process considerations may have tolled the limitations period during this time when the appellee was unable to seek such relief. Because the record needs further development for this Court to decide this issue, we affirm the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals to remand the case to the trial court for further evidentiary hearing to determine the circumstances surrounding the appellee's untimely filing of his post-conviction petition.

Tenn. R. App. P. 11 Application by Permission; Judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals Affirmed; Case Remanded

WILLIAM M. BARKER, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which E. RILEY ANDERSON, C.J., and ADOLPHO A. BIRCH, JR., J., joined. FRANK F. DROWOTA, III, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which JANICE M. HOLDER, J., joined.

Paul G. Summers, Attorney General & Reporter; Michael E. Moore, Solicitor General; Gordon W. Smith, Associate Solicitor General, Nashville, Tennessee, for the appellant, State of Tennessee.

John E. Eldridge, Knoxville, Tennessee, for the appellee, Dexter L. Williams.

OPINION

BACKGROUND

The procedural history in this case is extensive, but its review is essential to our resolution of this case. In 1993, Dexter Williams, the appellee, was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his conviction and sentence on January 9, 1995. The record in Williams's direct appeal reflects that on October 18, 1995, approximately nine months after the intermediate court affirmed his conviction, Williams's appointed trial attorney filed a motion to withdraw as counsel pursuant to Tennessee Supreme Court Rule 14.¹ In his motion, counsel stated that after he received notice of the intermediate court's affirmation of the conviction, he "sent a copy of the Opinion along with a cover letter to the Defendant advising [him] of the court's decision and advising that counsel no longer had the authority to represent Appellant to a further court." Counsel also stated that on October 12, 1995, Williams notified him that he never received this letter. Consequently, in this Rule 14 application, counsel stated that he was aware that the sixty day time period in which to file permission for application to appeal is not to be extended, however, in that Defendant did not receive proper notice, his due process rights are implicated, and thereby jeopardized. Additionally, since counsel failed to provide a timely Rule 14 notice, counsel would request that this Court grant Appellant an additional time period in which to file his permission to appeal.

The Court of Criminal Appeals denied the motion as untimely.

On November 8, 1995, ten months after the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals, counsel filed an application for permission to appeal to this Court. Because this application was also untimely pursuant to Rule 11(b) of the Tennessee Rules of Appellate Procedure,² this Court, without jurisdiction to consider the merits of the application, denied and dismissed the application for permission to appeal.³ See Tenn. R. App. P. 2 (prohibiting this Court from extending the time for filing an application for permission to appeal prescribed in Rule 11).

Thereafter, Williams filed a pro se petition for post-conviction relief on October 24, 1996, asserting fifteen grounds for relief, claiming, among other things, that he was "denied due process and effective assistance of counsel during the appellate process."⁴ On November 22, 1996, the trial court filed a preliminary order and, finding Williams to have made a colorable claim, appointed him an attorney who filed an amendment to the petition. Later, this attorney was allowed to withdraw from the case because his secretary was related to the victim in the original case. New counsel was then appointed, but eventually, pursuant to separate requests by both Williams and the attorney, he was allowed to withdraw as well. The withdrawal order, entered July 16, 1998, also granted Williams his request to represent himself.

The trial court scheduled the post-conviction relief hearing for March 26, 1999. Although the parties appeared in court on that date, Williams testified that he was unable to proceed with the hearing because he never received "the stuff [he] requested for discovery."⁵ Moreover, "the witness[es he] requested to have been subpoenaed" to be at the hearing were not there. The trial court then dismissed the petition for failure to present evidence, informing Williams that he could "appeal to the criminal court of appeals and see what they say about all this."

Williams appealed, arguing that because he was not provided a full and fair hearing on his claims for relief, the trial court violated his right to due process of law. The Court of Criminal Appeals agreed that the trial court erred by not granting a continuance and in dismissing the case without an evidentiary hearing. However, the intermediate court concentrated its analysis on the statute of limitations as the important issue. It addressed the State's discussion of Williams's failure to timely file his petition and Williams's allegation that such delay stemmed from ineffective assistance of counsel. The court remanded the case to the trial court for a hearing "initially to address the circumstances of the petitioner's direct appeal, of the application for permission to appeal, and of trial counsel's relationship to the application-as all relate to the issue of the statute of limitations. Any further hearing would depend on the trial court's decision on that issue."

We granted the State's application for permission to appeal. The State argues that Williams's post-conviction petition is time-barred and should have been summarily dismissed by the Court of Criminal Appeals without remanding the case for further proceedings. Although we agree with the State that the petition was filed beyond the statutory limitations period, we are concerned that Williams may have been deprived by his counsel of a reasonable opportunity to seek post-conviction relief. Therefore, due process considerations may have tolled the running of the statute of limitations for filing a post-conviction petition in this case. Because further development of the record is needed before this issue can be resolved, we affirm the decision of the Court of Criminal Appeals to remand the case for an evidentiary hearing to determine the circumstances surrounding the appellee's filing of his post-conviction petition.

ANALYSIS

The State argues that the post-conviction petition in this case is "indisputably time-barred" under the 1995 Post-Conviction Procedure Act, Tenn. Code Ann. 40-30-201 to -310 (1997 & Supp. 2000). The Act governs all petitions for post-conviction relief filed after May 10, 1995. 1995 Tenn. Pub. Acts. ch. 207, 3. Because the appellee filed his petition for post-conviction relief in October 1996, the Act is applicable in this case.

The State relies on the plain meaning of the statute to argue that the appellee's October 1996 petition was untimely. Specifically, the State asserts that pursuant to section -202(a),⁶ the appellee's time period began to run on January 9, 1995, after the Court of Criminal Appeals-the highest state appellate court to which an appeal was taken-affirmed his conviction. In the alternative, the State concedes that Williams might have had one year to file the petition from May 10, 1995. See 1995 Tenn. Pub. Acts ch. 207, 3 (stating that "notwithstanding any other provision of this part to the contrary, any person having ground for relief recognized under this part shall have at least one (1) year from May 10, 1995, to file a petition . . . under this part"). Under either circumstance, the State argues, Williams missed the deadline and thus, his petition should be deemed untimely.

We agree with the State that the language of the Act is unambiguous. The Act clearly mandates that post-conviction claims be filed within one year from the date of the final action or within one year from the enactment of this statute. Williams had one year after May 10, 1995, in which to file his petition, but he did not do so. Therefore, Williams failed to seek timely post-conviction relief under a strict application of the statute.

However, we are not prepared to summarily dismiss this petition as "indisputably time-barred." This Court has previously held that strict application of the statute of limitations may not deny a petitioner "a reasonable opportunity to assert a claim in a meaningful time and manner," Seals v. State, 23 S.W.3d 272, 279 (Tenn. 2000), and we are concerned that a...