Opinion ID: 179722
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Further state-court proceedings

Text: Brooks appealed his conviction and sentence to the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence and the length of the sentence imposed. State v. Brooks, No. 01C01-9703-CC-00099, 1998 WL 299267 (Tenn. Crim.App. June 9, 1998). His sufficiency-of-the-evidence claim focused on Lunceford's lack of credibility and Brooks's two alibi witnesses who testified that he was at the Pickle Factory bar when the murder occurred. After an extensive review of the evidence at Brooks's trial, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals found that a reasonable jury could have chosen to believe Lunceford and to disbelieve Brooks's alibi witnesses. The court therefore affirmed Brooks's conviction, and the Tennessee Supreme Court declined review. Brooks then filed a pro se petition for postconviction relief in the Circuit Court for the 19th Judicial District of Tennessee (Tennessee Circuit Court). He challenged numerous aspects of his criminal investigation and trial, raising claims of prosecutorial misconduct that primarily concerned the involvement of Lunceford. In addition, Brooks claimed to have received ineffective assistance of trial counsel for reasons that included counsel's alleged failure (1) to investigate evidence implicating Boston Rick, (2) to pursue evidence that an identifiable but unmatched latent fingerprint was discovered on one of the beer cans recovered on Barge Point Road, and (3) to object to the perjured testimony of Agent Phillips that Brooks's prints were discovered on both beer cans recovered at the scene of the killing, when in fact Brooks's palm print was discovered on one of the cans and no print matched to Brooks was found on the other. The Tennessee Circuit Court appointed counsel to represent Brooks during the postconviction proceedings. His counsel subsequently filed an amended petition for postconviction relief, adopting and incorporating by reference all of the claims included in Brooks's pro se petition and adding 11 ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims and two additional bases for relief that are not relevant to the instant appeal. After an evidentiary hearing, the Tennessee Circuit Court concluded that the claims raised in the pro se petition either lacked merit, were waived, or had previously been rejected by the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals. The court denied on the merits all issues raised in the counseled petition except for Brooks's claim that his appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to challenge certain aspects of Brooks's sentence. Both Brooks and the State appealed. Brooks challenged the Tennessee Circuit Court's determination that he had received effective assistance of counsel at trial and on most aspects of his appeal, and the State challenged the court's conclusion that Brooks had received ineffective assistance on appeal concerning his sentence. The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the portion of the trial court's judgment denying Brooks's claims and reversed the portion granting Brooks's ineffective-assistance-of-appellate-counsel claim. Brooks v. State, No. M2002-00386-CCA-R3-PC, 2003 WL 288434 (Tenn. Crim.App. Feb. 11, 2003). As for the claim that Brooks's trial counsel failed to investigate evidence implicating Richard Roberts, also known as Boston Rick, the court concluded that Brooks had not demonstrated ineffective assistance of counsel because the State presented evidence at the postconviction hearing that the TBI had compared Mr. Roberts's prints to the Barge Point Road beer cans and found no match. (A careful review of the record evidence, however, demonstrates that the factual basis for this conclusion is erroneous because the TBI did not in fact compare Mr. Roberts's prints to the Barge Point Road beer cans.) The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals denied Brooks's petition, and the Tennessee Supreme Court declined to review the intermediate court's decision.