EDWARD THOMAS KENDRICK, III v. MIKE PARRIS, WARDEN - Articles

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EDWARD THOMAS KENDRICK, III v. MIKE PARRIS, WARDEN

Posted by: Karen Belcher on Mar 2, 2021

Court: 6th Circuit Court (Published Opinions)

Attorneys 1: ARGUED: Amanda Rauh-Bieri, MILLER, CANFIELD, PADDOCK, AND STONE, PLC, Grand Rapids, Michigan, for Appellant.

Attorneys 2: ARGUED: John H. Bledsoe, OFFICE OF THE TENNESSEE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee.

Attorneys 3: ON BRIEF: Amanda Rauh- Bieri, Paul D. Hudson, MILLER, CANFIELD, PADDOCK, AND STONE, PLC, Grand Rapids, Michigan, for Appellant.

Attorneys 4: ON BRIEF: John H. Bledsoe, OFFICE OF THE TENNESSEE ATTORNEY GENERAL, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee.

Attorneys 5: ON BRIEF: Joshua Counts Cumby, ADAMS AND REESE LLP, Nashville, Tennessee, for Amici Curiae.

Judge(s): GUY, LARSEN, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges

Court Appealed: Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee of Chattanooga

LARSEN, Circuit Judge. One evening in 1994, Edward Kendrick III fatally shot his wife outside a Chattanooga gas station. At trial, he insisted that his rifle had malfunctioned and fired without Kendrick pulling the trigger. But the jury didn’t buy his account. Instead, it convicted Kendrick of first-degree murder.

In his petition for state postconviction relief, Kendrick raised seventy-seven claims alleging either ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) or prosecutorial misconduct. He succeeded in the Court of Criminal Appeals on two of his IAC claims, but the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed as to both. In doing so, it held that counsel’s decision not to adduce the testimony of a firearms expert was not constitutionally deficient performance. Neither was counsel’s failure to introduce favorable hearsay statements under the excited utterance exception.

Kendrick then sought federal habeas review. The district court denied his forty-eight- claim petition. We granted a certificate of appealability (COA) on the two IAC claims that the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals had initially found meritorious. Because the Tennessee Supreme Court did not unreasonably apply Supreme Court precedent in denying Kendrick relief, we now AFFIRM.

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