IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE

AT KNOXVILLE

Assigned on Briefs March 22, 2016

STATE OF TENNESSEE v. PATRICIA TARVER

Appeal from the Circuit Court for Blount County

No. C-22462 Tammy M. Harrington, Judge

No. E2015-01496-CCA-R3-CD – Filed April 5, 2016

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Appellant, Patricia Tarver, appeals the trial court’s revocation of her probation, arguing 

that the trial court abused its discretion by ordering her to serve her original sentence in 

confinement. Because there is substantial evidence to support the trial court’s finding 

that Appellant violated the terms and conditions of her probation, the trial court did not 

abuse its discretion by revoking Appellant’s probation and executing the underlying 

sentence. The judgment of the trial court is affirmed.

Tenn. R. App. P. 3 Appeal as of Right; Judgment of the Circuit Court Affirmed

TIMOTHY L. EASTER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which JOHN EVERETT 

WILLIAMS and NORMA MCGEE OGLE, JJ., joined.

J. Liddell Kirk (on appeal), Knoxville, Tennessee, and Mack Garner (at trial), District 

Public Defender, for the appellant, Patricia Tarver.

Herbert H. Slatery III, Attorney General and Reporter; Jonathan H. Wardle, Assistant 

Attorney General; Mike Flynn, District Attorney General; and Shari Tayloe, Assistant 

District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee.

OPINION

This is Appellant’s appeal of her probation revocation just one month after 

receiving the privilege of probation. On February 23, 2015, Appellant pled guilty to theft 
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of pawned or conveyed rental property. She received a sentence of split confinement 

with thirty days to serve.1 

At the July 31, 2015 revocation hearing, Tim Craig testified that he was 

Appellant’s probation officer. Appellant showed up for initial intake on February 27th. 

An intake officer reviewed the terms and conditions of probation with Appellant, and a 

signed copy of the rules was entered into evidence at the hearing on the revocation of 

probation. After the intake, Appellant was supposed to contact Officer Craig for her next 

report date. She did not do so, but Officer Craig called her on March 2nd and set up an 

appointment for March 4th at 11:00 a.m. Appellant did not show up for her appointment.

That afternoon, Officer Craig called Appellant’s phone number and left a 

voicemail at 1:13 p.m., but she never returned his call. He called again on March 9th and 

left another voicemail. Again, Appellant did not call him back. Officer Craig then 

contacted Appellant’s grandmother, but her grandmother said that she had not been in 

contact with Appellant since she was arrested. On March 11th, Officer Craig mailed 

Appellant a notice that she had failed to report as required and that she had 48 hours to 

contact him. Officer Craig sent the letter to the address that Appellant provided during 

the intake. Officer Craig did not receive a response. On March 18th, Officer Craig 

contacted Appellant’s sister in Georgia, but her sister said that she had not had contact 

with Appellant since before she was arrested. Officer Craig then called Appellant’s 

mother and left a voicemail, but neither Appellant nor her mother returned his call. 

Officer Craig discovered that Appellant had provided an invalid address on her intake 

form, but he was able to identify the correct address of Appellant’s mother. He then 

mailed a second notice to the address of Appellant’s mother. Despite all of the efforts 

described above, Appellant never contacted Officer Craig after their initial phone 

conversation.

Appellant testified that she was thirty-one years old and had two children, aged 

thirteen and five. After pleading guilty, she served thirty days in jail before being 

released on probation on February 25th. She provided her mother’s address on the 

probation intake form because that was where she intended to stay. However, 

Appellant’s mother would not let her stay there because there was not enough room for 

Appellant and her children. Appellant was originally from Blount County, but she had 

been living in Georgia since she was seventeen. She lived in Riverdale, which is outside 

of Atlanta, with her sister. She moved back to Tennessee for a brief period of time,

which was when she was arrested. One of Appellant’s children lives in Tennessee, and 

the other lives in Georgia.

 

1 The judgment is not contained in the technical record. The probation violation report indicates 

that Appellant’s probationary period was two years.
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When Appellant learned that she could not stay with her mother, she went back to 

live with her sister in Georgia because she did not have a place to stay in Tennessee. 

Appellant explained:

This is my first time being locked up, and everybody just kept telling me 

they were going to make me stay here for two years in this jail, and I didn’t 

want to stay here. . . . I didn’t want to be in jail, so I didn’t say anything—I 

just went home.

Once back in Georgia, Appellant worked some fast food jobs before being arrested. 

Appellant said that she had been in jail for almost a month since she was arrested in 

Georgia and then extradited to Blount County. 

Appellant acknowledged that she signed the rules of probation form, but she 

claimed that the incorrect address was written by someone else. Appellant maintained 

that she provided the correct address for where she intended to stay.

Initially, Appellant denied that she spoke with Officer Craig about scheduling an 

appointment and denied receiving any letters from him or learning from her family that 

he was looking for her. However, Appellant admitted that she knew that Officer Craig 

had called her phone but denied receiving any voicemails. Appellant later acknowledged 

that she spoke with Officer Craig to set up an appointment. She said she was afraid to 

tell him then that she was not living at the address that she had provided and was already 

in Georgia.

Appellant admitted, “It was my mistake by not telling them that I moved to 

Georgia.” She also admitted that she was aware that she was supposed to report to her 

probation officer once a month and that failure to do so would be a violation of the terms 

and conditions. Appellant explained:

[H]onestly, I didn’t have the means to come back and forth from Georgia 

and then I was scared that when I told him that I didn’t live here that he was 

going to say, “Well, you’ve got to come serve your time in this jail.”

Appellant denied having any other pending charges and said that she had 

successfully completed probation before. Appellant acknowledged that she failed to 

appear for a court date in May 2014 and was arrested on a capias prior to pleading guilty 

in this case. 

The trial court found that the State had carried its burden of proving that Appellant 

failed to report for her first meeting and revoked Appellant’s probation. Appellant filed a 
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timely notice of appeal and now argues that the trial court abused its discretion by 

revoking probation and ordering her to serve the balance of her sentence in confinement.

A trial court’s decision to revoke a defendant’s probation “will not be disturbed on 

appeal unless . . . there has been an abuse of discretion.” State v. Harkins, 811 S.W.2d 

79, 82 (Tenn. 1991) (citing State v. Williamson, 619 S.W.2d 145, 146 (Tenn. Crim. App. 

1981)). An abuse of discretion has been established when the “record contains no 

substantial evidence to support the conclusion of the trial judge that a violation of the 

conditions of probation has occurred.” State v. Delp, 614 S.W.2d 395, 398 (Tenn. Crim. 

App. 1980); see State v. Shaffer, 45 S.W.3d 553, 554 (Tenn. 2001); State v. Grear, 568 

S.W.2d 285, 286 (Tenn. 1978). When a trial court finds by a preponderance of the 

evidence that a defendant has violated the conditions of probation, the court “shall have 

the right . . . to revoke the probation.” T.C.A. § 40-35-311(e)(1). After revoking a 

defendant’s probation, the trial court may return a defendant to probation with modified 

conditions as necessary, extend the period of probation by no more than two years, order 

confinement, or order the defendant’s sentence into execution as originally entered. 

T.C.A. §§ 40-35-308(a), (c), -310. “In probation revocation hearings, the credibility of 

witnesses is for the determination of the trial judge.” Carver v. State, 570 S.W.2d 872, 

875 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1978) (citing Bledsoe v. State, 387 S.W.2d 811, 814 (Tenn. 

1965)).

The record in this case contains substantial evidence supporting the trial court’s 

revocation of Appellant’s probation. Appellant admitted that she spoke with her 

probation officer to set up her first report date but did not show up for that meeting, 

choosing instead to leave the state without talking to her probation officer. Appellant 

also admitted that she knew that failing to report was a violation of the terms and 

conditions of her probation. A defendant’s admission of violating the terms of her

probation, alone, is an adequate basis for revocation of probation. State v. Thomas Ray 

Ward, No. W2012-02054-CCA-R3-CD, 2013 WL 793213, at *4 (Tenn. Crim. App. Mar. 

1, 2013), no perm. app. filed. There is ample evidence in this record to support the trial 

court’s finding that Appellant did not report to her probation officer, which is a violation 

of the terms and conditions of her probation. Although the trial court could have 

reinstated Appellant to probation, it was not required to do so. Because the trial court did 

not abuse its discretion in revoking probation, Appellant is not entitled to relief.

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TIMOTHY L. EASTER, JUDGE