IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE

AT NASHVILLE

Assigned on Briefs December 14, 2004 at Knoxville

STATE OF TENNESSEE v. TIM BRAWLEY 

Appeal from the Circuit Court for Williamson County

No. 1-2001-01-19-A Russ Heldman, Judge

No. M2004-01409-CCA-R3-CD - Filed February 1, 2005

The defendant, Tim Brawley, appeals from the Williamson County Circuit Court’s order revoking

his probation. On appeal, he claims that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to revoke his probation

because his sentences had expired before the violation warrant was issued. We disagree and affirm

the trial court’s order.

Tenn. R. App. P. 3; Judgment of the Circuit Court is Affirmed.

JAMES CURWOOD WITT, JR., J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which GARY R. WADE, P.J.,

and ALAN E. GLENN, J., joined.

Robert T. Carter, Franklin, Tennessee, for the Appellant, Tim Brawley.

Paul G. Summers, Attorney General & Reporter; Kathy D. Aslinger, Assistant Attorney General;

Ronald L. Davis, District Attorney General; and Mary Katharine White, Assistant District Attorney

General, for the Appellee, State of Tennessee.

OPINION

Based upon his guilty pleas, the defendant was convicted on March 5, 2001, of theft,

possession of Schedule II drugs, possession of Schedule IV drugs, possession of drug paraphernalia,

and possession of burglary tools. The sentences were imposed to run concurrently and yielded an

effective sentence of two years, six months. The defendant was ordered to serve 120 days in jail and

the remainder of the sentence on probation. His probation supervisor signed a violation warrant on

February 18, 2003, and filed the warrant on the same day. On April 7, 2003, the supervisor signed

and filed an amendment to the violation warrant. Both the original warrant and the amendment were

served on the defendant on April 2, 2004. The trial court conducted a revocation hearing and

revoked the defendant’s probation by order entered on May 4, 2004.

The defendant now appeals, raising only the issue of whether the trial court had

jurisdiction to revoke his probation. Specifically, he claims that his sentences expired prior to the
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issuance of the warrant. To support this claim, he argues that the trial judge signed and issued the

violation warrant on September 18, 2003. He posits that his sentences began running on March 5,

2001, and that the two-year, six-month effective sentence expired on September 5, 2003, 13 days

before the warrant was issued. 

The defendant raised the jurisdictional issue in the trial court, and the trial judge, who

also issued the warrant, found that the notation appearing above his signature on the warrant that

reads “The 18 day of September, A.D. 2003,” was a typographical error. th

The probation officer signed the warrant, and the judge acknowledged his signature

on February 18, 2003. The warrant bears a stamped filing date of February 18, 2003. Moreover, the

April 7, 2003 amendment to the warrant references the warrant as dated February 18, 2003. Based

on these facts, the state claims that the record supports the trial court’s finding that the warrant was

fully issued and filed on February 18, 2003. The state posits that because the February 18, 2003

warrant was issued within two years and six months of March 5, 2001, the sentence had not expired,

and the trial court had jurisdiction to revoke the defendant’s probation. 

“If the probation revocation warrant is issued within the term of the sentence, the

issuance of the warrant commences the revocation proceedings and thereby interrupts the running

of the probationary period ‘until such time as the trial court [may] hear and determine the issue raised

by the [warrant].’” State v. Shaffer, 45 S.W.3d 553, 555 (Tenn. 2001) (quoting McGuire v. State,

200 Tenn. 315, 320, 292 S.W.2d 190, 193 (1956)) (emphasis added). Thus, the jurisdictional issue

before us is determined by when the violation warrant was issued.

 

Tennessee Rule of Criminal Procedure 36 provides that “[c]lerical mistakes in

judgments, orders, or other parts of the record and errors in the record arising from oversight or

omission may be corrected by the court at any time and after such notice, if any, as the court orders.”

In our view, Rule 36 effectively authorized the trial court to elide the “September” reference in the

date of the trial judge’s issuance of the warrant, once the court determined that the warrant

erroneously referred to September 2003 instead of February. 

Moreover, the circumstances support the trial court’s determination that “September”

was erroneously inserted. The issuing judge, who was the judge during the revocation proceeding,

acknowledged the affiant’s signature on the warrant. The acknowledgment is dated February 18,

2003. The warrant was stamped filed in the trial court clerk’s office on February 18, 2003.

Apparently, the dates were typed into the warrant by the affiant or the affiant’s agent. The

amendment to the warrant referenced the warrant “dated” February 18, 2003. These circumstances

support the conclusion that the judge signed and issued the warrant on February 18, 2003. Thus, the

judge issued the warrant before the defendant’s sentence expired, and accordingly the trial court had

jurisdiction to revoke the defendant’s probation.

The judgment of the trial court is affirmed. 
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___________________________________ 

JAMES CURWOOD WITT, JR., JUDGE