Opinion ID: 1859252
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: jurisdiction

Text: [A] defendant who enters a plea of guilty waives all nonjurisdictional defects and constitutional infirmities. State v. Yoreck, 133 S.W.3d at 612 (citing State v. McKinney, 74 S.W.3d 291, 306 (Tenn. 2002); State v. Pettus, 986 S.W.2d 540, 542 (Tenn.1999)). Thus, an appellate court shall consider whether the trial court had jurisdiction over the subject matter, whether or not presented for review. Yoreck, 133 S.W.3d at 612. Because the defendant in this case was charged with a proper indictment for rape of a child, the trial court was vested with jurisdiction. See id. Nevertheless, although a trial court may be initially vested with jurisdiction, a defendant may be convicted only of an offense enumerated in the indictment, or an offense that qualifies as a lesser-included offense thereof. State v. Moore, 77 S.W.3d 132, 134 (Tenn.2002). Here, the defendant was properly charged with rape of a child, but he ultimately pleaded guilty to incest. Incest is not a lesser included offense of rape of a child. See State v. Beauregard, 32 S.W.3d 681, 683 (Tenn. 2000) (holding that a defendant can be convicted of both rape and incest based upon a single act because they are different offenses). Thus, we must determine if the indictment was amended to include the charge of incest. In Yoreck , this Court stated that an indictment may be amended with the consent of the defendant. 133 S.W.3d at 612; Tenn. R.Crim. P. 7(b) (2003). Specifically, we found that the defendants had signed plea agreements indicating the charge to which they were pleading and that the judgments had listed the amended charges. Thus, we held that the indictment had been amended with the consent of the defendants, and the defendants were on notice of the offenses to which they pleaded guilty. In the present case, the defendant signed a Plea of Guilty and Waivers of Jury Trial and Appeal form which listed the conviction to which he was pleading as incest. The only significant difference from Yoreck is that the judgment in this case did not state the Amended Charge. Instead, on the judgment, the Offense was listed as Rape of Child and underneath that section, the Conviction offense was listed as Incest. Nevertheless, we conclude that in the context of a guilty plea proceeding, the listing of the conviction for incest on the form which the defendant signed is sufficient to put the defendant on notice of the charge with which he was convicted. Based on Yoreck , we conclude the defendant was initially charged with a proper indictment, so the trial court was vested with jurisdiction. See Yoreck, 133 S.W.3d at 612. Although a transcript of the guilty plea proceeding is not included in the record, the defendant signed a Plea of Guilty and Waivers of Jury Trial and Appeal form which listed the conviction to which he was pleading as incest. Additionally, the judgment listed the original Offense as Rape of Child and the Conviction offense as Incest. Based on the foregoing, we conclude, as we did in Yoreck , that the conviction was, at most, voidable, and therefore, is not jurisdictionally defective. Consequently, if the Court of Criminal Appeals vacated the conviction[ ] ... because it concluded the trial court lacked subject matter jurisdiction, then the court erred in so doing. Id. at 613.