State of Tennessee v. Maurice Shaw

Summary

The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed the result reached by the Court of Criminal Appeals on Maurice Shaw's conviction for possession of cocaine with the intent to deliver, doing so on separate grounds stated herein. It held that facts independent of the accomplice's testimony — the defendant's driving and occupying the vehicle in which the cocaine was found, his walking away from the car shortly after the stop, and his extreme nervousness — sufficiently corroborated the accomplice's account and rendered the evidence legally sufficient. On the second issue, it held that counsel's inadvertent, immediately corrected opening-statement remark calling the defendant guilty, along with unsupported complaints about the closing argument and an unobtained prior record, established neither deficient performance nor prejudice under the two-part effectiveness test. No separate opinions accompanied the decision.