Background
Verchaunt Joshua Williams was convicted in Montgomery County Circuit Court on one count each of first degree murder, tampering with evidence, and abuse of a corpse arising from a January 2012 homicide. He received an effective sentence of life plus five years. The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his convictions and sentence on direct appeal in 2015, and he was subsequently unsuccessful in seeking post-conviction relief, including a prior unsuccessful motion to reopen in 2025.
In early 2026, Williams filed a new pro se motion to reopen his prior post-conviction petition, invoking the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Glossip v. Oklahoma, 604 U.S. 226 (2025), which ordered a new trial for Richard Glossip based on the state’s knowing use of false testimony in violation of Napue v. Illinois and Giglio v. United States. Williams argued that Glossip established a new constitutional right not recognized at the time of his trial, and that it should apply retroactively to his case. The trial court denied the motion on March 10, 2026, finding that Glossip merely applied longstanding precedent rather than establishing any new constitutional right.
Williams then filed a timely application for permission to appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeals under Tennessee Code Annotated § 40-30-117. He did not, however, attach a copy of the underlying motion to reopen to his application, creating an unresolved question about whether the motion had been filed within the one-year deadline following Glossip‘s issuance on February 25, 2025.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Criminal Appeals denied Williams’s application for permission to appeal. The court identified two independent grounds for denial. First, the application was procedurally defective: Williams failed to attach a copy of his motion to reopen, as required by § 40-30-117(c), making it impossible to confirm whether the motion was filed within the one-year filing window. That defect alone required denial of the application.
Second, and alternatively, the court held that even if the application were procedurally complete, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion to reopen. Under § 40-30-117(a), a motion to reopen on the basis of new case law requires a final ruling establishing a constitutional right that was not previously recognized at the time of trial. The court agreed with the trial court that Glossip does not meet that standard — the Supreme Court’s decision rested entirely on the pre-existing principles of Napue and Giglio and thus did not create a new constitutional right. Accordingly, Glossip provided no statutory basis for reopening Williams’s post-conviction proceedings.
Key Takeaways
- Glossip v. Oklahoma does not establish a new constitutional right for purposes of Tennessee’s motion-to-reopen statute because it applies established Napue/Giglio false-testimony doctrine rather than breaking new constitutional ground.
- A motion to reopen application must be accompanied by copies of all documents filed in the trial court, including the motion itself; failure to include the motion is an independent basis for denial.
- Tennessee’s Post-Conviction Procedure Act strictly limits successive post-conviction attacks, and the § 40-30-117 motion-to-reopen pathway is narrow — new case law qualifies only if it recognizes a genuinely novel constitutional right and the motion is filed within one year of that ruling.
Why It Matters
This decision signals that Tennessee courts will not treat Glossip v. Oklahoma as a vehicle for reopening closed post-conviction cases. Because Glossip was decided on the well-settled foundation of Napue and Giglio, practitioners seeking to invoke it under § 40-30-117 face a significant threshold obstacle: the ruling simply does not create the “new” constitutional right the statute requires. Defense attorneys considering Glossip-based motions in Tennessee should carefully evaluate whether any argument can distinguish the case from its doctrinal predecessors.
The decision also reinforces the strict procedural requirements governing motions to reopen in Tennessee. Courts will deny applications that are incomplete on their face, regardless of the underlying merits — underscoring the importance of meticulous compliance with the attachment and filing-deadline requirements of § 40-30-117(c).