Court Opinion

ID: 9765491
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 04:03:49.510184+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:10.403343
License: Public Domain

*854FONES, Justice,
dissenting.
I cannot agree with the majority opinion in its conclusion that Prince and McDowell have not waived their right to challenge the underlying guilty pleas used to enhance a triggering offense to habitual criminal status.
Both of these defendants have filed prior post-conviction proceedings and both were represented by counsel in the prior proceedings. Both were filed many years after Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1969) and years after State v. Mackey, 553 S.W.2d 337 (Tenn.1977). There is no proposition of criminal law as certain and indisputable as the principle that the trial court’s failure to advise a defendant of his constitutional right against self-incrimination prior to accepting his guilty plea is fatal to its validity and that that constitutional ground has been available to every defendant in every state of this nation since the date Boykin was released. Mackey did not create the right, the court applied it in Tennessee for the first time.
The majority opinion repeatedly acknowledges that State v. McClintock, 732 S.W.2d 268 (Tenn.1987) and Rounsaville v. Evatt, 733 S.W.2d 506 (Tenn.1987) did not create a new constitutional right.
In McClintock the defendant was indicted and convicted of DUI, second offense and given an enhanced punishment authorized for a second offense. He attacked the validity of his first DUI conviction and the enhancement on the ground that he had not waived his right to counsel when he pled guilty to the first offense. The trial court and the Court of Criminal Appeals held that defendant was improperly attempting to invalidate his first conviction by an unauthorized collateral attack. This Court affirmed that result. Even though McClintock was a direct appeal, not a post-conviction proceeding we held that where judgments are subject to constitutional attack, post-conviction proceedings are the proper vehicle, that in fact, “a post-conviction proceeding is clearly a collateral attack upon the judgment. Goodner v. State, 484 S.W.2d 364 (Tenn.Crim.App.) cert. denied (Tenn.1972).” 732 S.W.2d at 271, 272.
In the paragraph wherein this Court stated conclusions with respect to post-conviction procedure applicable to attacks on the validity of judgments used for enhancement, the following appears:
If Defendant files a petition for post-conviction relief to challenge the judgment of the first conviction and is successful, a second petition could be filed to challenge the sentence on the second conviction. Judicial economy will be served by permitting these petitions to be filed, consolidated and heard in the same court at the same time.... Such petitions must be filed in a court of record having jurisdiction to hear such causes in the county in which the challenged conviction was entered. 732 S.W.2d at 274.
There is no reason why a single post-conviction petition cannot be filed wherein all convictions used for enhancement and all other constitutional issues involved in the adjudication of the triggering offense and habitual criminal status are joined, where, as here, all proceedings were in the same county. If the first post-conviction proceeding is not, “any proceeding ... in which the ground could have been presented”, under T.C.A. § 40-30-112, then any number of subsequent petitions raising constitutional issues allegedly violated would likewise fail to qualify as a prior proceeding invoking the statute.
It also appears to me that the majority is saying, implicitly, that the above quoted portion of McClintock is a new constitutionally based adjudication that justifies holding that with respect to habitual criminal convictions, prior post-conviction proceedings attacking ineffective assistance of counsel, cruel and unusual punishment, or any constitutional issue in the proceeding was not really a prior post-conviction proceeding for the purpose of the waiver statute, T.C.A. § 40-30-112. Also implicit in the majority opinion is the notion that each *855underlying conviction used for enhancement to habitual criminal status being separate proceedings, were immune from attack in the first proceeding seeking to invalidate the habitual criminal adjudication. It would seem to follow that McDowell could file eight separate consecutive petitions, each attacking one of the prior “collateral judgments” without running afoul of the waiver statute.
A ground for relief is waived pursuant to T.C.A. § 40-30-112 if defendant “failed to present it for determination in any proceeding before a court of competent jurisdiction in which the ground could have been presented.”
The criminal court of Shelby County is the court of competent jurisdiction for all of the convictions and triggering offenses of Prince and McDowell. There are eight divisions and eight judges of that court, but it is a single court with a single clerk for jurisdiction purposes. All of the “collateral judgments” used for enhancement were subject to attack in any proceeding brought by Prince or McDowell that involved the validity of their habitual criminal convictions, before and after McClin-tock. Both defendants failed to raise the constitutional validity of the underlying convictions in their prior post-conviction proceedings. Neither of their petitions in the proceedings now before the Court assert any reason for the failure to raise the self-incrimination claim in the prior proceedings. Under numerous decisions of this Court and the Court of Criminal Appeals, those constitutional claims are presumed to have been waived pursuant to T.C.A. § 40-30-112. I can discern no reason for this departure from settled principles of law and procedure that we will be compelled to return to in subsequent cases.