State of Tennessee, Appellee v. Vaughn Mixon, Appellant

Summary

The Tennessee Supreme Court held that the one-year statute of limitations for a petition for writ of error coram nobis runs from the date the judgment of conviction becomes final in the trial court — thirty days after entry absent a timely post-trial motion, or upon entry of an order disposing of such a motion — not from the conclusion of appellate proceedings, and it adopted a stay-and-consolidate procedure under which a petition may be filed during a pending appeal but the appellate court must address the direct-appeal issues first. Applying that procedure, the court held the trial court abused its discretion under Tenn. R. Evid. 609 by allowing impeachment with the defendant's prior sexual battery conviction, an error that was not harmless in this credibility contest, and it vacated the convictions for attempted rape, attempted incest, and sexual battery and remanded for a new trial. The court further held under the Denton four-factor analysis that attempted rape and sexual battery are the same offense on these facts, barring dual convictions upon retrial. It agreed the trial court erred in ruling that recanted testimony can never support coram nobis relief but did not reach the merits of that claim.