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Tuesday, February 09, 2010

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Lucian Pera nominated for ABA treasurer

The American Bar Association announced nominations for key posts at its 2010 Midyear Meeting being held in Orlando, Fla., including Lucian Pera of Memphis to be treasurer. The ABA House of Delegates will hold elections in August at the 2010 ABA Annual Meeting in San Francisco. Pera would be elected to serve as treasurer for a three-year term beginning at the conclusion of the 2011 Annual Meeting until the close of the ABA Annual Meeting in August 2014.

Pera is a partner in the litigation practice group of Adams & Reese in Memphis. He has served on the ABA Board of Governors, in the ABA House of Delegates and as a member of the Ethics 2000 Special Committee. He is long active in the field of professional ethics. Pera has represented numerous media clients and has taken on numerous First Amendment and media law issues. Others nominated are Linda A. Klein of Atlanta, to be chair of the ABA House of Delegates; and Judge Cara Lee Neville of Minneapolis to be secretary.

Find out about more actions taken by the ABA House

TODAY'S OPINIONS
Click on the category of your choice to view summaries of today’s opinions from that court, or other body. A link at the end of each case summary will let you download the full opinion in PDF format. To search all opinions in the TBALink database or to obtain a text version of each opinion, go to our OpinionSearch page. If you have forgotten your password or need to obtain a password, you can look it up on TBALink at the TBA's Membership Central.

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You can obtain full-text versions of the opinions two ways. We recommend that you download the Opinions to your computer and then open them from there. 1) Click the URL at end of each Opinion paragraph below. This should give you the option to download the original document. If not, you may need to right-click on the URL to get the option to save the file to your computer. 2) Do a key word search in the Search Link area of TBALink. This option will allow you to view and save a plain-text version of the opinion.

COURTNEY ANDERSON v. STATE OF TENNESSEE

Court: TCCA

Attorneys:

Claiborne H. Ferguson, Memphis, Tennessee, for the Petitioner-Appellant, Courtney Anderson.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Benjamin A. Ball, Assistant Attorney General; William L. Gibbons, District Attorney General; Karen Cook and Lora Fowler, Assistant District Attorneys General, for the Appellee, State of Tennessee.

Judge: MCMULLEN

The Petitioner, Courtney Anderson, appeals the Shelby County Criminal Court's denial of post-conviction relief, contending that he received ineffective assistance of counsel based on counsel's failure to include a copy of the presentence report, a transcript of the plea submission hearing, and a transcript of the sentencing hearing in the record on appeal. Upon review, we affirm the judgment of the post-conviction court.

http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCCA/2010/andersonc_020910.pdf

JAY H. CHAMBERS v. STATE OF TENNESSEE

Court: TCCA

Attorneys:

Michael Robert Giaimo, Cookeville, Tennessee, for the appellant, Jay H. Chambers.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Benjamin A. Ball, Assistant Attorney General; William Paul Phillips, District Attorney General; John W. Galloway, Jr., Deputy District Attorney General; and Thomas E. Barclay, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

Judge: TIPTON

The Petitioner, Jay H. Chambers, appeals the Scott County Criminal Court's denial of his petition for post-conviction relief from his conviction for rape and resulting ten-year sentence. The Petitioner contends that the trial court erred in finding that he received the effective assistance of counsel. We reverse the judgment of the trial court and grant the Petitioner a delayed appeal to file an application for permission to appeal with the Tennessee Supreme Court.

http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCCA/2010/chambersj_020910.pdf

STATE OF TENNESSEE v. RICKY LEE HATCHEL

Court: TCCA

Attorneys:

Gary F. Antrican, District Public Defender, Somerville, Tennessee, for the Defendant- Appellant, Ricky Lee Hatchel.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Renee W. Turner, Assistant Attorney General; D. Michael Dunavant, District Attorney General; and Richard D. Cartwright, Assistant District Attorney General, for the Appellee, State of Tennessee.

Judge: MCMULLEN

The Defendant-Appellant, Ricky Lee Hatchel, was convicted by a Tipton County jury of aggravated assault, a Class C felony and originally sentenced to three years in the Tennessee Department of Correction. The jury also imposed a $10,000 fine, which was reduced by the trial court to $5,000. Following a sentencing hearing, the trial court subsequently found that Hatchel qualified for alternate sentencing, and ordered Hatchel to complete one year of community corrections before being transferred to supervised probation. In this appeal, Hatchel claims: (1) the insufficiency of the evidence; and (2) the trial court erred by allowing the State to introduce photographs of the victim's injuries. Upon review, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCCA/2010/hatchelr_020910.pdf

SHANNON RICHARD HUDSON v. STATE OF TENNESSEE

Court: TCCA

Attorneys:

Shannon Richard Hudson, Whiteville, Tennessee, Pro Se.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Leslie E. Price, Assistant Attorney General; and William H. Cox, III, District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

Judge: TIPTON

The Petitioner, Shannon Richard Hudson, appeals pro se from the Hamilton County Criminal Court's dismissal of his untimely filed petition for post-conviction relief from his convictions for two counts of aggravated sexual battery and one count of attempted aggravated sexual battery and from his effective twenty-seven-year sentence. On appeal, the Petitioner contends that principles of due process require the tolling of the applicable statute of limitations. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCCA/2010/hudsons_020910.pdf

STATE OF TENNESSEE v. MAURICE JONES

Court: TCCA

Attorneys:

Robert Wilson Jones, District Public Defender, and Harry E. Sayle, III, Assistant Public Defender (on appeal); and Andrew Bernstein, Memphis, Tennessee (at trial), for the appellant, Maurice Jones.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; J. Ross Dyer, Senior Counsel; William L. Gibbons, District Attorney General; and Scot A. Bearup, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

Judge: WILLIAMS

The defendant, Maurice Jones, entered an open plea agreement to one count of Class E felony sexual battery in the Shelby County Criminal Court. Following a sentencing hearing, the trial court imposed a sentence of two years, all suspended to probation but sixty days to be served in the county workhouse. As a special condition of his probationary sentence, the trial court ordered that the defendant is not allowed unsupervised contact with any minor child under eighteen years of age, including his own children. On appeal, the defendant asserts that the trial court exceeded its authority in denying him unsupervised contact with his minor children. Following review of the record, we conclude that the special condition is overbroad as written. Accordingly, the case the remanded to the trial court for imposition of a more defined and less limiting condition.

http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCCA/2010/jonesm_020910.pdf

STATE OF TENNESSEE v. JOHN PARKER

Court: TCCA

Attorneys:

Robert W. Jones, District Public Defender; William Monroe (at trial) and Phyllis Aluko (on appeal), Assistant Public Defenders, Memphis, Tennessee, for the Defendant-Appellant, John Parker.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; J. Ross Dyer, Assistant Attorney General; William L. Gibbons, District Attorney General; and Pamela D. Fleming, Assistant District Attorney General, for the Appellee, State of Tennessee.

Judge: MCMULLEN

The Defendant-Appellant, John Parker, pled guilty in the Criminal Court of Shelby County to four counts of theft of property over $60,000, a Class B felony, and three counts of theft of property over $10,000, a Class C felony. After a sentencing hearing, Parker received the following sentences: nine years for theft of property over $60,000, ten years for theft of property over $60,000, three years for each theft of property over $10,000, and eight years for the two remaining theft of property over $60,000. The trial court ordered the nine, ten, and three-year sentences to be served consecutively. It ordered the eight-year sentence to be served concurrently to the ten-year sentence, for an effective sentence of twenty-two years. On appeal, Parker claims: (1) the trial court erred in enhancing two of Parker's sentences above the presumptive statutory minimum; (2) the trial court erred in imposing consecutive sentencing; (3) the trial court improperly denied alternative sentencing; (4) the trial court should have granted a new sentencing hearing based upon newly discovered evidence; and (5) there was sufficient cumulative error to require a new sentencing hearing. Upon review, we affirm the judgments of the trial court.

http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCCA/2010/parkerj_020910.pdf

STATE OF TENNESSEE v. DANA WEBB

Court: TCCA

Attorneys:

Larry D. Sims, II (on appeal) and Ross Sampson (at trial), Memphis, Tennessee, for the appellant, Dana Webb.

Robert E. Cooper, Jr., Attorney General and Reporter; Cameron L. Hyder, Assistant Attorney General; William L. Gibbons, District Attorney General; and Scot A. Bearup, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

Judge: GLENN

The defendant, Dana Webb, appeals the denial of her request for judicial diversion, arguing that the trial court abused its discretion by focusing on the need for deterrence while not considering factors in favor of diversion. Following our review, we reverse the judgment of the trial court and grant judicial diversion. The matter is remanded to the trial court for the imposition of conditions of the probationary term.

http://www.tba2.org/tba_files/TCCA/2010/webbd_020910.pdf

TODAY'S NEWS

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TBA Member Services

Legal News

Application deadline for commission is tomorrow

Wednesday is the deadline to apply for a vacancy on the Tennessee Judicial Nominating Commission. The vacancy was created by the resignation of chairman David Bautista.

For more information or to apply, go to tncourts.gov

No one-year limit on TennCare's right to seize

A ruling by the Tennessee Supreme Court means families who inherited property from their loved ones could have that property seized by the government several years later. The ruling affects people who were in nursing homes paid by TennCare, which has the right to take a patient's homes, farms and even family heirlooms after they died as payment. Before this ruling, it wasn't completely clear whether TennCare had to file a claim within one year of the person's death. The ruling said there is no one-year limit. WSMV.com reported the news.

Students to witness Supreme Court cases

More than 600 high school students from Rutherford and Cannon counties will hear oral arguments in three Tennessee Supreme Court cases on Feb. 12, as part of a program designed to educate young Tennesseans about the judicial branch of government. Students and their teachers from 13 schools, along with home-schooled students, will attend a special Supreme Court session at the historic Rutherford County Courthouse in Murfreesboro as part of the SCALES (Supreme Court Advancing Legal Education for Students) project. Following oral arguments, students will meet for question-and-answer sessions with the attorneys who presented each side in their cases.

Learn more from the AOC

8th Circuit says lethal injection OK

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at St. Louis has upheld Arkansas' lethal injection procedure, finding it is designed "to avoid the needless infliction of pain, not to cause it."

WMC-TV has this AP story

Should defendants 'tweet' at their own trials?

Jurors sending "tweets" during trials has become old news, but two reports of defendants tweeting during their own trials is yet another new twist.

Read what they said from ABAJournal.com

Upcoming

Celebration of Civil Rights-era music tonight

The White House Music Series continues tonight, when President Obama and the First Lady host a concert honoring Black History Month. "In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music From the Civil Rights Movement" will feature performances by Bob Dylan, Natalie Cole, Jennifer Hudson, John Legend, John Mellencamp, Joan Baez, Smokey Robinson and more. Listen live on Tuesday, starting at 8 p.m. ET, at whitehouse.gov.