Opinion ID: 856487
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Direct and postconviction review

Text: Though Lovins was sentenced in 2002, direct review of his conviction and sentence did not ultimately become final until 2007—nearly three years after the Blakely decision. The procedural history was unusual, however, because Lovins’s counsel at first failed to file an application for permission to appeal on direct review to the Tennessee Supreme Court. Then, only after Lovins had filed a pro se motion for postconviction relief, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals determined that his counsel’s failure constituted ineffective assistance and re-opened Lovins’s direct review to allow the filing. As a result of this intertwined direct and postconviction review, the Tennessee Supreme Court did not finally deny relief on Lovins’s direct appeal until March 5, 2007. In Lovins’s initial and unsuccessful direct appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeals, he presented only one argument: that the evidence was insufficient to support a conviction for second-degree murder. The Court of Criminal Appeals denied relief on this claim on February 4, 2004. When Lovins later filed his request for postconviction relief, however, he significantly expanded his allegations of error. He framed his request for state postconviction relief as a claim of ineffective assistance of trial and appellate counsel, arguing that his counsel had (1) failed to appeal the exclusion of Kim Floyd’s testimony about Burnett’s role in the death of her daughter, (2) failed to appeal the “length of the sentence and the application of enhancement factors,” and (3) failed to file the request for permission to appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court, among other failures. The petition also noted that the prosecution had failed to disclose the physical evidence that was introduced at trial. The trial court held a postconviction relief hearing and denied relief on all claims in a June 2, 2005 order that noted Lovins was alleging a “Blakely violation.” The trial No. 11-5545 Lovins v. Parker Page 6 court, however, found no constitutional violation “pursuant to the recent Tennessee Supreme Court decision in [Gomez I],” in which the Tennessee sentencing procedure was held not to violate Blakely. Lovins appealed. The Court of Criminal Appeals then delivered two separate rulings on postconviction relief. First, the court held that Lovins’s trial counsel, Agee, had “unilaterally terminated” Lovins’s direct appeal. As a result, the court found that Lovins was “entitled to seek a delayed Rule 11 application to appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court” under Tennessee Supreme Court Rule 28, § 9(D)(2)(b)(i).2 The Court of Criminal Appeals therefore vacated its original direct appeal order from February 4, 2004, and “reinstate[d]” it as of November 3, 2006, to allow Lovins to seek review by the Tennessee Supreme Court of his direct appeal. R. 18-1 at PageID #4. In the meantime, the court stayed the remaining postconviction proceedings. Id.; see Gibson v. State, 7 S.W.3d 47, 49 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1998) (noting that a petition for postconviction relief “may not be maintained while a direct appeal of the same conviction and sentence is being prosecuted”). Though Lovins had been appointed new counsel for his petition for postconviction relief, the Court of Criminal Appeals instructed Lovins’s direct appeal counsel, Agee, to file this application for permission to appeal on direct review. In the application, despite the fact that Lovins had raised several additional constitutional claims in his motion for postconviction relief, Agee again only presented one question for review: whether the evidence had been sufficient to convict. On March 5, 2007, with a bare form order, the Tennessee Supreme Court denied the request for leave to appeal. Lovins did not file a petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court. 2 Rule 28, § 9(D) empowers trial courts and the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals hearing a petition for postconviction relief to enter an order “granting the petitioner a delayed appeal” from a judgment entered on direct review of the petitioner’s conviction and sentence. See Stokes v. State, 146 S.W.3d 56, 61 (Tenn. 2004) (noting that such a delayed appeal is available to petitioners for unilateral termination of their direct appeal, though not for termination of a postconviction appeal). Once a delayed appeal is granted, and the proper Rule 11 application is filed, “the Appellate Court Clerk shall immediately reinstate the original appeal on the docket” and the appeal then proceeds as it would otherwise have on direct review under Rule 11. Tenn. Sup. Ct. R. 28, § 9(D)(2)(b)(iii). “Where a delayed appeal is granted and the petitioner is unsuccessful on appeal, and new issues cognizable in a post-conviction proceeding result from the handling of the delayed appeal, the petitioner may amend the original post-conviction petition to include such new issues.” Id. §9(D)(3)(a). No. 11-5545 Lovins v. Parker Page 7 After the original appeal had been reinstated and was finally completed, the Court of Criminal Appeals resumed the postconviction process and filed a second opinion and order denying postconviction relief on all of Lovins’s claims. In that September 14, 2007 order, the court did not state that any of Lovins’s claims were defaulted for state-law procedural reasons. Instead, it addressed and dismissed each claim on the merits. On the Blakely claim, the Court of Criminal Appeals noted that the United States Supreme Court had recently vacated the State v. Gomez decision (Gomez I) on which the trial court had predicated its conclusion that no Blakely violation had occurred. Nonetheless, the Court of Criminal Appeals denied relief on the claim, stating that Blakely was not applicable to cases on collateral review. Because this is the last reasoned state-court decision on the Blakely issue, we reproduce the relevant language in full below: In Blakely, the United States Supreme Court concluded that the “‘statutory maximum’ for Apprendi [v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000),] purposes is the maximum sentence a judge may impose solely on the basis of the facts reflected in the jury verdict or admitted by the defendant.” Blakely, 542 U.S. at 303. Subsequent to that decision, our supreme court decided State v. Gomez, in which a majority of the court concluded that, unlike the sentencing scheme in Blakely, “Tennessee’s sentencing structure does not violate the Sixth Amendment.” Gomez, 163 S.W.3d at 661. However, the United States Supreme Court recently vacated our supreme court’s ruling in Gomez and remanded the case for reconsideration in light of its recent decision in Cunningham v. California, 549 U.S. ----, 127 S. Ct. 856 (2007). Thus, we no longer follow Gomez given the Supreme Court’s instruction. State v. James A. Mellon, No. E2006-00791-CCA-R3-CD, 2007 WL 1319370,  (Tenn. Crim. App., at Knoxville, May 7, 2007) (no Tenn. R. App. 11 application filed). In the present case, Petitioner raised the issue in a collateral attack. This Court has previously held that retrospective application of the rule announced in Blakely is not applicable to cases on collateral review. Roy Allen Burch v. State, No. E2004-02365-CCA-R3-PC, 2005 WL 1584379,  (Tenn. Crim. App., at Knoxville, July 7, 2005) (no Tenn. R. App. P. 11 application filed) (citing Isaac Lydell Herron v. State, No. W2004-02533-CCA-R28-PC (Tenn. Crim. App., at Jackson, Nov. 22, 2004)). Petitioner is not entitled to relief on this issue. No. 11-5545 Lovins v. Parker Page 8 Lovins v. State, No. W2005-01446-CCA-R3-PC, 2007 WL 2700097, at  (Tenn. Crim. App. Sept. 14, 2007) (“Lovins II”). Lovins filed an application for permission to appeal that postconviction ruling to the Tennessee Supreme Court, but the application was denied. He then filed a motion to recall the mandate of the Tennessee Supreme Court and requested leave to file a petition for extraordinary review of the Blakely claim, but that motion was denied as well. This habeas case requires a review of the retroactivity reasoning of the Court of Criminal Appeals—the last state court to enter a reasoned decision on Lovins’s Blakely claim. And the focus of this inquiry will necessarily be on the timing of each of the preceding state-court decisions. We recognize that it can be difficult to distill the temporal relationship from the above narrative and thus (at the risk of repetition) include below a time-line of the state-court decisions in Lovins’s case: # September 17, 2002: Sentencing. State trial court finds additional facts and enhances Lovins’s sentence from 20 to 23 years. # February 4, 2004: Direct appeal. Conviction and sentence affirmed on direct appeal by the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals. # June 24, 2004: U.S. Supreme Court decides Blakely v. Washington. # June 2, 2005: Postconviction review. State trial court recognizes that Lovins has alleged a Blakely violation, but denies relief. # November 3, 2006: Postconviction review. Court of Criminal Appeals finds ineffective assistance of counsel and “reinstate[s]” its February 4, 2004 judgment, in order to allow the direct appeal to be re-opened. # March 5, 2007: Direct appeal. Tennessee Supreme Court denies Lovins’s application for permission to appeal on his re-opened direct review. # September 14, 2007: Postconviction review. Court of Criminal Appeals acknowledges the Tennessee sentencing procedures likely violated Blakely, but still denies relief on Lovins’s postconviction Blakely claim based on a retroactivity analysis. This is the last reasoned state court decision. The key relationship, as discussed below, is between Lovins’s direct appeal and Blakely—which was decided nearly three years before Lovins’s re-opened direct appeal No. 11-5545 Lovins v. Parker Page 9 ultimately became final. In the end, despite this unusual procedural history, both the Court of Criminal Appeals and the Tennessee Supreme Court denied postconviction relief.