Christopher Lee Shaw v. State of Tennessee

Christopher Lee Shaw, Petitioner, appeals the Davidson County Criminal Court’s denial of post-conviction and error coram nobis relief from his convictions of possession of more than twenty-six grams of cocaine with the intent to sell or deliver within a drug-free zone, evading arrest while operating a motor vehicle, and possession of drug paraphernalia, for which he received an effective sentence of fifteen years in the Tennessee Department of Correction. On appeal, Petitioner contends that he is entitled to post-conviction relief because he was denied the effective assistance of counsel. Specifically, he contends that trial counsel failed to: (1) adequately investigate Adrian Wilkerson; (2) obtain funds to retain a fact investigator to investigate Mr. Wilkerson and an expert witness in undercover narcotics investigations; (3) inform Petitioner that two additional witnesses made out-of-court identifications of Petitioner driving the white Nissan SUV; (4) file a pretrial motion to suppress a suggestive single photographic identification and tainted in-court identification; and (5) ensure a unanimous jury verdict for Petitioner’s conviction in Count 1 of the
indictment—possession of more than twenty-six grams of cocaine with the intent to sell or deliver within a drug-free zone—by filing a motion for bill of particulars, requesting an election of offenses, and challenging the jury instruction to raise an issue of a unanimous verdict. Petitioner further asserts that the trial court improperly determined that the petition for writ of error coram nobis was time-barred, asserting that he was entitled to due process tolling of the statute of limitations. Following a thorough review, we affirm the trial court’s denial of post-conviction and error coram nobis relief.