Court Opinion

ID: 1083538
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2013-10-09 21:17:48.376497+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:30:29.254755
License: Public Domain

IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE

                                  AT KNOXVILLE             FILED
                                JUNE 1997 SESSION              July 25, 1997

                                                          Cecil Crowson, Jr.
                                                           Appellate C ourt Clerk

ROGER LEE SAWYERS,                    )
                                      )    C.C.A. NO. 03C01-9607-CC-00255
            Appellant,                )
                                      )    HAMBLEN COUNTY
VS.                                   )
                                      )    HON. WILLIAM H. INMAN,
STATE OF TENNESSEE,                   )    JUDGE
                                      )
            Appellee.                 )    (Post-conviction)

FOR THE APPELLANT:                         FOR THE APPELLEE:

GREG EICHELMAN                             JOHN KNOX WALKUP
Public Defender                            Attorney General & Reporter

D. CLIFTON BARNES                          MICHAEL J. FAHEY, II
Asst. Public Defender                      Asst. Attorney General
1609 College Park Dr., Box 11              450 James Robertson Pkwy.
Morristown, TN 37813-1618                  Nashville, TN 37243-0493

                                           C. BERKELEY BELL
                                           District Attorney General

                                           VICTOR J. VAUGHN
                                           Asst. District Attorney General
                                           510 Allison St.
                                           Morristown, TN 37814

OPINION FILED:____________________

AFFIRMED

JOHN H. PEAY,
Judge
                                              OPINION

                  The petitioner filed for post-conviction relief which was denied by the trial

court. This Court affirmed. The Tennessee Supreme Court subsequently reversed and

remanded for a hearing. Following the ordered hearing, the court below denied relief,

from which the petitioner now appeals. Upon our review of the record, we affirm the

judgment below.

                   In 1976, when he was seventeen years and seven months old, the

petitioner murdered Elmer Trent in the course of robbing him with a firearm. He was not

indicted until 1978; he pled guilty to the murder “a few weeks shy of his 19th birthday.”1

At the time he pled guilty, the petitioner apparently thought that he had been over the age

of eighteen at the time he murdered Trent. He did not discover his real age until 1986.

He subsequently filed for post-conviction relief alleging that the criminal court in which he

pled guilty had not had subject-matter jurisdiction over him because he had been a

juvenile at the time he committed Trent’s murder.

                  When the petitioner’s claim for relief reached our Supreme Court, it ordered

the case “returned to the trial court for a de novo hearing to determine whether or not [the

petitioner] would have been transferred from juvenile to criminal court, based on the facts

existing at the time of his indictment and trial.” Sawyers v. State, 814 S.W.2d 725, 729

(Tenn. 1991). This hearing was held in 1996 and the court below found that the

petitioner would have been transferred and therefore denied post-conviction relief a

second time. It is from this ruling that the petitioner now appeals.

                  In ordering this matter remanded, our Supreme Court specifically referred

       1
           Sawyers v. State , 814 S.W .2d 725, 727 (T enn. 1991).

                                                     2
to T.C.A. § 37-1-134(a) and stated that an order of transfer from juvenile to criminal court

“must be predicated on a determination . . . that there are