IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE

AT JACKSON

Assigned on Briefs December 4, 2018

WILLIE L. PEGUES v. STATE OF TENNESSEE

Appeal from the Criminal Court for Shelby County

No. 91-01420 Mark Ward, Judge

No. W2018-00830-CCA-R3-PC

The Petitioner, Willie L. Pegues, appeals from the Shelby County Criminal Court’s 

dismissal of his petition pursuant to the Post-Conviction DNA Analysis Act. The postconviction court denied relief on the basis that, although the Petitioner requested various 

forms of scientific analysis, his claim was not cognizable because he had not requested 

DNA analysis. On appeal, the Petitioner contends that the court erred in dismissing his 

petition because the scope of the forensic testing authorized by the statute is not limited 

to DNA analysis. We affirm the judgment of the post-conviction court.

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

ROBERT H. MONTGOMERY, JR., J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which ROBERT 

W. WEDEMEYER and ROBERT L. HOLLOWAY, JR., JJ., joined.

Willie L. Pegues, Hartsville, Tennessee, Pro Se.

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

Attorney General; Amy P. Weirich, District Attorney General; Tracye Jones, Assistant 

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

OPINION

The Petitioner is serving a life sentence for a 1990 first degree felony murder. See 

State v. Willie L. Pegues, No. 02C01-9202-CR-00040, 1994 WL 68375, at *1 (Tenn. 

Crim. App. Mar. 9, 1994), perm. app. denied (Tenn. July 5, 1994). In 2018, he filed a 

petition pursuant to the Post-Conviction DNA Analysis Act of 2001 (the Act), Tennessee 

Code Annotated sections 40-30-301 to -313, seeking lumber analysis, luminol test 

analysis, blood spatter analysis, forensic autopsy analysis, crime scene reconstruction 

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analysis, and false confession analysis. He did not seek DNA analysis. The postconviction court did not conduct a hearing on the petition and instead filed a written order 

summarily dismissing the petition because it failed to state a cognizable claim under the 

Act.

The Act provides that persons convicted of first degree murder, among other 

offenses,

may at any time, file a petition requesting the forensic DNA analysis of any 

evidence that is in the possession or control of the prosecution, law 

enforcement, laboratory, or court, and that is related to the investigation or 

prosecution that resulted in the judgment of conviction and that may 

contain biological evidence.

T.C.A. § 40-30-303 (2018).

Despite the language of the Act, the Petitioner contends that the testing he has 

requested is available pursuant to the Act. He acknowledges that this court has said that 

the Act contemplates only DNA testing but not other forms of scientific analysis. See 

Bondurant v. State, 208 S.W.3d 424, 431 (Tenn. Crim. App. 2006) (“The plain, clear, and 

unambiguous language of the statutes at issue in this case allow for DNA analysis, but 

not additional serological testing.”); Earl David Crawford v. State, No. E2002-02334-

CCA-R3-PC, 2003 WL 21782328, at *3 (Tenn. Crim. App. Aug. 4, 2003) (“The statute 

does not authorize the trial court to order the victim to submit new DNA samples years 

after the offense nor does the statute open the door to any other comparisons the 

petitioner may envision.”), perm. app. denied (Tenn. Dec. 22, 2003). He argues that 

Powers v. State, 343 S.W.3d 36, 49-50 (Tenn. 2011), abrogated this court’s decisions in 

Bondurant and Earl David Crawford and that, as a result, the post-conviction court erred 

in dismissing his claim as not cognizable under the Act.

The petitioner in Powers sought DNA testing of evidence from his 1980 offenses 

and comparison of the results to a DNA database on the basis that he could establish his 

innocence if the DNA results matched another DNA profile in the database. Powers, 343 

S.W.3d at 39. The post-conviction court denied relief, and this court held “that DNA 

analysis was limited to a comparison between the petitioner’s DNA and that collected as 

a part of the evidence in the case.” Id. The supreme court held that access to the DNA 

database was permitted pursuant to the Act “if a positive match between the crime scene 

DNA and a profile contained within the database would create a reasonable probability 

that a petitioner would not have been prosecuted or convicted if exculpatory results had 

been obtained or would have rendered a more favorable verdict or sentence if the results 

had been previously available.” Id. In reaching its conclusion, the Powers court 

abrogated the Earl David Crawford holding that the only DNA analysis permitted by the 
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Act was that “‘which compares the petitioner’s DNA samples to DNA samples taken 

from biological specimens gathered at the time of the offense if all four statutory criteria 

[of the Act] are met.’” See id. at *49 (quoting Earl David Crawford, 2003 WL 

21782328, at *3). Although the Powers court took a more expansive view of the scope of 

the Act regarding DNA testing than this court had previously, the Powers court did not 

address an interpretation of the Act that would permit non-DNA scientific testing. The 

Petitioner contends that Powers abrogated Bondurant, as well. However, Powers did not 

specifically address Bondurant. See id.

Therefore, we reject the Petitioner’s argument that Powers stands for the 

proposition that the Act should be construed beyond its explicit language permitting 

testing of DNA evidence in certain circumstances. The Act does not authorize non-DNA 

scientific testing. Because none of the forms of scientific testing the Petitioner sought 

involved DNA analysis, the post-conviction court did not err in dismissing his petition. 

The Petitioner is not entitled to relief on this basis.

In consideration of the foregoing and the record as a whole, the judgment of the 

post-conviction court is affirmed.

 _____________________________________

 ROBERT H. MONTGOMERY, JR., JUDGE