Roger L. Hickman v. State of Tennessee

Summary

The Tennessee Supreme Court affirmed dismissal of Roger Hickman's habeas corpus petition attacking his 1986 misdemeanor marijuana conviction, whose judgment was silent on whether he had counsel or waived counsel. Because his ten-day suspended sentence had long expired, he was neither 'imprisoned' nor 'restrained of liberty' under Tenn. Code Ann. § 29-21-101 — the possible use of the conviction to enhance a federal sentence being merely a collateral consequence — and the judgment was not void on its face, since silence as to counsel does not defeat the presumption of regularity attaching to a judgment whose jurisdictional facts appear. At most the conviction is voidable, attackable only through a post-conviction petition that would be time-barred by the one-year limitations statute. The Court also held that dismissal of a habeas petition for procedural noncompliance with § 29-21-107 is discretionary rather than mandatory, though it declined to rest its decision on that ground.