A Hamilton County man who repeatedly confessed to committing felony murder and numerous counts of aggravated rape was not denied his constitutional right to effective legal counsel, the Tennessee Supreme Court said Monday in a decision affirming his convictions and sentence of death.
Justice E. Riley Anderson, writing for a 4-1 majority, upheld a Court of Criminal Appeals opinion affirming the death sentence imposed by a jury against Harold Wayne Nichols in 1989. In a separate concurring and dissenting opinion, Justice Adolpho A. Birch, Jr., agreed with the majority that the felony murder conviction should stand, but disagreed on the imposition of the death penalty on the basis of his "long line of dissents" challenging the method the court uses to compare capital cases to ensure the sentences are not disproportionate.
Nichols was sentenced to death for the 1988 killing of 21-year-old Karen Pulley. He broke into Pulley's Chattanooga home, raped her, and hit her in the head with a board at least four times. The victim suffered skull fractures and massive brain injuries and died the following day. In addition to the death sentence, Nichols received a 60-year sentence for aggravated rape and a 15-year sentence for first-degree burglary, both in connection with the attack on Pulley.
Nichols was arrested several months after the Pulley murder for unrelated rapes and burglaries committed in the Chattanooga area. Nichols confessed to rapes against several victims and also gave a videotaped confession to the rape and murder of Pulley. After pleading guilty to aggravated rape offenses against two women and being tried by a jury and convicted for aggravated rape offenses against two others, Nichols pleaded guilty to felony murder, aggravated rape and first-degree burglary for the offenses against Pulley.
Prosecutors sought the death penalty based on two statutory aggravating factors – that the murder of Pulley occurred during the commission of a felony and that Nichols had prior convictions for violent felonies - the aggravated rape offenses committed against the other victims. Jurors found that the aggravating factors outweighed mitigating evidence presented during the sentencing phase of his trial.
In 1995 and 1996, Nichols filed petitions for post-conviction relief challenging his convictions and death sentence claiming, in part, that he was denied the right to effective assistance of counsel guaranteed by the state and federal constitutions. In the majority opinion, Anderson wrote that "the trial court conducted evidentiary hearings . . . over the course of eight days, considered thousands of pages of records and documentary evidence and heard testimony from dozens of witnesses."
The Supreme Court addressed 10 claims raised on appeal by Nichols and found that all were without merit. Anderson wrote that Nichols' attorneys were experienced in criminal and capital case defense and had worked over 1,300 out-of-court hours and 259 in-court hours on the Pulley case and more than 650-out-of-court and 30 in-court hours on the other cases. The lead attorney testified he had reviewed files and records, talked to investigating officers, interviewed witnesses and visited the crime scenes. Anderson also observed that the attorneys "spent nearly 70 hours meeting with Nichols in prison, during which Nichols consistently confirmed his statements to officers" confessing to the crimes. Nichols also admitted his guilt to a defense investigator, a mental health expert and others, including the victim's mother.
Anderson concluded that "despite his confessions and statements, the petitioner's main argument is that his confessions should have been challenged as false because they contained inaccuracies and omissions and because there was evidence of his innocence."
"The argument is immediately undercut, however, by the fact that the petitioner never refuted his confessions or his own statements to his trial counsel and others. . . .," Anderson wrote. "Accordingly, when viewed in the appropriate context . . . we agree with the trial court's conclusion that the evidence presented during the post-conviction failed to establish that trial counsel's performance was deficient. "