# Nichols v. State

> Tennessee Supreme Court · October 7, 2002 · 90 S.W.3d 576

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9524143

## Case

- **Full name:** Harold Wayne NICHOLS v. STATE of Tennessee
- **Court:** Tennessee Supreme Court
- **Decided:** October 7, 2002
- **Citations:** 90 S.W.3d 576; 2002 Tenn. LEXIS 419; 2002 WL 31235413
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurring in part by Birch
- **Judges:** Justice E. Riley Anderson
- **Cited by:** 519 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9524143

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding defense counsel did not perform deficiently for failing to present additional mitigation witnesses at a penalty hearing where their testimony would have been cumulative to evidence already presented at the sentencing hearing
- observing that in order to establish ineffective assistance of counsel in a claim involving a guilty plea, a petitioner must establish that but for the deficiency, he would have proceeded to trial rather than entering the guilty plea
- stating that “a defendant’s statements or confessions do not eliminate counsel’s duty to investigate”
- stating that this court erred by providing an advisory opinion

## Opinion text

ADOLPHO A. BIRCH, JR., J.,
concurring and dissenting.
I fully concur in the conclusion of the majority that Nichols’s convictions should be affirmed. To the extent, however, that the petitioner’s allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel may be interpreted to include the failure to object to the method of proportionality review, I continue to adhere to the views expressed in a long line of dissents beginning with State v. Chalmers, 28 S.W.3d 913, 923-25 (Tenn.2000) (Birch, J., concurring and dissenting), and elaborated upon in State v. Godsey, 60 S.W.3d 759, 793-800 (Tenn.2001) (Birch, J., concurring and dissenting). Those dissents suggest, essentially, that the comparative proportionality review protocol currently embraced by the majority is inadequate to shield defendants from the arbitrary and disproportionate imposition of the death penalty. See Tenn.Code Ann. § 39-13-206(e) (1997). Accordingly, while I concur in the affirmance of Nichols’s convictions, I cannot, for the reasons above stated, concur in the imposition of the death penalty in this case.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9524143. Public record. Not legal advice.