Opinion ID: 1060379
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Shortcomings of Workman v. State, 41 S.W.3d 100 (Tenn.2001)

Text: A mere two days before his scheduled execution, Philip Workman filed a motion to reopen his post-conviction petition under Tennessee Code Annotated section 40-30-217(a)(2) (1997), claiming that he possessed new scientific evidence that showed his actual innocence of the crime for which he was sentenced to death. He also filed a motion seeking a writ of error coram nobis. Both the trial court and the Court of Criminal Appeals denied these petitions, finding that he was not eligible to reopen his post-conviction petition under the statutes and that his motion for the writ of error coram nobis was barred by the statute of limitations. On the very afternoon of his scheduled execution, Workman appealed these findings to this Court, and in a 3-2 decision remanding the case to determine whether a writ of error coram nobis should issue, Workman's imminent execution was stayed with little more than an hour remaining. Although the statute of limitations for a writ of error coram nobis is one year from the date of the defendant's conviction, see Tenn.Code Ann. §§ 40-26-105; 27-7-103, the Workman majority held that considerations of due process tolled that limitations period to allow the defendant to have a hearing on the issue. The factual basis for doing so was cited only vaguely as the circumstances of the case. See Workman, 41 S.W.3d at 101, 103-04. I dissented from the majority's decision because I believed then, as I do now, that the defendant had been afforded all of the processand morethat the Constitution commanded was due to him. Prior to Workman , the lynchpin of the due-process tolling analysis was the presence of circumstances beyond the defendant's control which conspired to prevent the defendant from making a timely assertion of rights. [1] After all, only when the defendant is faced with such circumstances does his or her liberty interest become sufficient weighty to overcome the State's countervailing interests in preserving the finality of judgments and preventing stale and groundless claims. However, when a defendant sits on his or her rights, these governmental interests become even more compelling. The Workman majority did not recognize this fact, and it instead improperly focused its attention upon the defendant's delay in obtaining the evidence rather than upon his lengthy delay in bringing the evidence to the attention of a court. See Workman, 41 S.W.3d at 103. The fact remains, however, that Workman delayed seeking a writ of error coram nobis for an additional thirteen months after his receipt of this evidence. Even granting for sake of argument that the one-year statute of limitations did not begin running until he actually came into possession of the evidence, Workman's claim would still have been well beyond this new full limitations period. [2] In essence, the Court's decision in Workman can stand for three propositions: (1) that due process considerations can toll a statute of limitations even without evidence suggesting that the defendant was prevented by circumstances beyond his or her control from bringing a timely claim; (2) that due process considerations can toll a statute of limitations even when the delay in seeking relief is the result of a tactical decisionthe overwhelming indication from the record was that Workman's delay in seeking relief was a tactical decision to delay his execution; and (3) that due process considerations can toll successive statutes of limitations, so as to permit a defendant as many as three bites at the post-conviction appleWorkman was permitted a hearing eighteen years after the original statute of limitations had run and after his new full statute of limitations, beginning from the discovery of the alleged exculpatory evidence, had run as well. These propositions have no basis whatsoever in our prior decisions, [3] and with them, the Court ushered in dangerous and ominous concepts that may ultimately render a nullity all statutes of limitations for post-conviction remedies. Our new era of due-process tolling jurisprudence is disconcerting principally because it is without identifiable limits or boundaries. How is any court to know when due process commands that a statute of limitations be tolled after our holding in Workman ? Prior to today, one could have reasonably supposed that Workman was merely an aberration in the law, with its result compelled by the fact that the defendant was already in the chamber when the stay of execution was issued. However, by relying upon Workman today, the Court has undermined any such supposition, and it has instead breathed full life into a decision that we should properly put asunder. I am at a loss to know where this due-process tolling path will end, but I suspect that it will end, if at all, only after miring the law in a state of unmitigated turmoil. As we can already see from a quick review of the cases from the Court of Criminal Appeals, the intermediate court is unclear as to how to apply Workman or what the limits of that case may be. Indeed, given the vagueness of the factors supporting its holding, I believe that attempting a consistent application of due-process tolling after Workman is likely to be less fruitful than answering any one of the imponderables offered in William Blake's timeless poem, The Tyger. At the end of the day, our continued reliance on Workman as authority for any proposition only serves to further compound our previous error. Plainly stated, Workman was a hastily considered decisionone brought on by the pressures of extraordinary circumstancesand it cannot be justified as a logical or natural progression of prior law. I would therefore prefer that we admit our analytical mistakes in Workman and either overrule that decision or consign its fate to the realm of legal oblivion.