Robert Murphy v. State of Tennessee, M2016-00071-CCA-R3-PC

Background

In 2002 Robert Murphy pled guilty to two counts each of rape and aggravated sexual battery (Class B felonies) and two counts of incest (Class C), receiving an effective 48-year sentence at 100% with consecutive 12-year terms for the Class B felonies.
In 2013 Murphy filed a habeas petition claiming the original judgments omitted mandatory lifetime community supervision and omitted pretrial jail credit.
The habeas court ordered corrected judgments; Lewis County entered amended judgments on March 17, 2014 adding lifetime community supervision, and later entered corrected judgments on February 25, 2015 adding pretrial jail credit.
Murphy filed a pro se post-conviction petition on April 22, 2015 challenging the voluntariness of his pleas because he did not know at the time of plea about lifetime supervision; he stated the petition concerned the February 25, 2015 corrected judgments.
The State moved to dismiss as untimely, arguing the one-year post-conviction limitations period began on March 17, 2014 (when lifetime supervision was added); the trial court agreed and denied relief.
On appeal Murphy argued due-process tolling was required because he did not receive notice of the March 17, 2014 amended judgments until late May 2014; the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed dismissal, finding no extraordinary circumstances and that the limitations period began March 17, 2014.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Murphy's post-conviction petition was timely under Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-30-102	Murphy: Due-process tolling required because he lacked actual notice of the March 17, 2014 amended judgments until late May 2014, so his April 22, 2015 filing was timely from date of discovery	State: Limitations began when the amended judgments adding mandatory lifetime supervision were entered (March 17, 2014); discovery rule not applied; jail-credit correction did not restart limitations	Held: Petition untimely. Limitations began March 17, 2014; no due-process tolling.
Whether failure to include lifetime community supervision rendered judgment void	Murphy: (implicit) omission affected voluntariness of plea and sentence legality	State: Omission made sentence illegal and was correctable by amended judgment; but this starts limitations period when corrected judgment entered	Held: Omission rendered the sentence illegal (judgment void) and the March 17, 2014 amended judgment triggered the limitation period.
Whether addition of pretrial jail credit on Feb 25, 2015 restarted limitations	Murphy: He framed petition as attacking the Feb 25, 2015 corrected judgments	State: Jail-credit correction is not an illegal sentence issue and does not restart limitations	Held: Adding jail credit does not restart or extend the limitations period.
Whether due-process tolling applies where petitioner had time after notice to file but failed to do so	Murphy: Relied on equitable tolling principles and analogy to Burford	State: Petitioner had ten months after learning of amendment and gave no adequate reason; Burford distinguishable	Held: Tolling not warranted; petitioner not diligently pursuing rights and not in procedural trap.

Key Cases Cited

Whitehead v. State, 402 S.W.3d 615 (Tenn. 2013) (due-process tolling standard for post-conviction limitations)
Bush v. State, 428 S.W.3d 1 (Tenn. 2014) (articulation of diligence and extraordinary-circumstance prongs for tolling)
Burford v. State, 845 S.W.2d 204 (Tenn. 1992) (tolling where petitioner was caught in a procedural trap)
State v. Bronson, 172 S.W.3d 600 (Tenn. Crim. App. 2005) (omission of mandatory supervision renders sentence illegal)
State v. Brown, 479 S.W.3d 200 (Tenn. 2015) (failure to award jail credit does not render sentence illegal and is not habeas grounds)