Background
Bobby V. Summers was indicted in Davidson County, Tennessee for first degree premeditated murder, first degree felony murder, especially aggravated robbery, and tampering with evidence in connection with the December 26, 2017 robbery and killing of James Kleinert. Evidence indicated Kleinert was lured into Summers’s minivan under the pretense of a drug transaction, robbed, and shot. Two days after the killing, Summers burned his van. Text messages recovered from his phone showed he acknowledged burning the van and referenced possessing approximately $6,800 shortly after the robbery. In August 2019, pursuant to a negotiated plea agreement, Summers pleaded guilty to facilitation of first degree premeditated murder in exchange for an out-of-range sentence of twenty years at sixty percent release eligibility. He took no direct appeal.
Beginning in November 2022, Summers repeatedly sought to collaterally attack his conviction through post-conviction petitions, Rule 36.1 motions to correct an illegal sentence, a writ of error coram nobis, and the present petition for writ of habeas corpus filed in May 2025. His central recurring argument across these proceedings was that he could not be convicted of facilitation of murder because no principal offender — specifically, James Brett Lee O’Brien, who died in January 2018 — was ever indicted, prosecuted, or convicted. He also claimed his trial counsel tricked and coerced him into entering the guilty plea.
The Lauderdale County Circuit Court summarily dismissed the habeas petition, finding it both procedurally defective and legally insufficient. The court noted that Summers had left blank the petition’s question asking whether the legality of his restraint had previously been adjudicated, and had failed to attach a copy of his prior habeas petition despite indicating this was his second application. Summers timely appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the summary dismissal on both procedural and substantive grounds. The court first found the petition facially defective under Tennessee Code Annotated section 29-21-107(b)(3) and (4) because Summers failed to attest that the legality of his restraint had not previously been adjudicated and failed to attach his prior habeas petition or explain its absence. Either deficiency independently supported dismissal.
Proceeding to the merits, the court rejected all four of Summers’s arguments. It held that facilitation of first degree murder is a valid statutory offense under Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-11-403. It further held that Tennessee law, since the legislature’s 1989 reforms codified at section 39-11-407, expressly eliminates any requirement that a principal offender be prosecuted or convicted before a facilitator may be convicted — directly foreclosing Summers’s primary argument. The court also found the indictment valid because it charged a recognized statutory offense, and noted these arguments had been litigated and rejected in Summers’s prior proceedings. Finally, the court held that challenges to the voluntariness of a guilty plea are not cognizable in a habeas corpus proceeding under Tennessee law, and that the full plea colloquy transcript in any event refuted Summers’s coercion claim.
Because Summers failed to demonstrate that the trial court’s judgment was void on its face — as opposed to merely voidable — habeas corpus relief was unavailable. The court emphasized that habeas relief in Tennessee is limited to facial invalidity arising from lack of jurisdiction or an expired sentence, and that none of Summers’s claims met that standard.
Key Takeaways
- Under Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-11-407, it is expressly no defense to a facilitation charge that the principal offender was never prosecuted, convicted, or is deceased — the 1989 Criminal Code abolished the common law requirement of a principal’s prior conviction.
- Habeas corpus in Tennessee reaches only void judgments — those facially invalid for lack of jurisdiction or an expired sentence — and claims of involuntary guilty plea or ineffective assistance of counsel are not cognizable on habeas review because they require proof beyond the record, rendering the judgment at most voidable.
- Strict compliance with the procedural requirements of Tennessee Code Annotated section 29-21-107 is mandatory; failure to answer whether the legality of restraint was previously adjudicated, or to attach a prior habeas petition, independently warrants summary dismissal.
- Habeas corpus may not be used to relitigate claims already raised and decided in prior post-conviction or collateral proceedings.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the narrow scope of habeas corpus relief under Tennessee law and underscores that the state’s facilitation statute does not require the government to first identify, indict, or convict a principal offender. Defense attorneys and inmates should note that arguments premised on the absence of a convicted principal — a theory rooted in pre-1989 common law — have been definitively foreclosed by statute and will not support habeas, post-conviction, or Rule 36.1 relief in Tennessee courts.
The case also illustrates the consequences of successive, repetitive collateral attacks. By the time this habeas petition was decided, the same core arguments had been rejected across at least five separate proceedings. Courts may and do dismiss such petitions on both procedural and substantive grounds simultaneously, offering no traction for petitioners who recycle theories that have already been conclusively adjudicated against them.