APPELLATE COURT OPINIONS

This is an appeal from the final divorce decree of Rathnasabapathy Mohan ("the Husband") and Mathivathani Mohan ("the Wife") which was entered by  the lower court in December of 1996. The contested divorce action initiated by the Wife involved issues of custody, visitation, child support, alimony,  classification and division of marital property, and apportionment of marital debt. This appeal by the Husband emanates from the fact the Husband was not present when the final hearing took place.

I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion because I do not think the trial judge abused her discretion in denying the appellant’s motion for a new trial. The appellant’s motion does not set out what proof he would offer at a new trial and how that might change the result below. Therefore, I think the trial judge justifiably overruled the motion.

The petitioner pled guilty to six counts of drug charges in Davidson County case number 92-A-647 on May 16, 1995. He was sentenced as a Range I offender to concurrent ten year sentences to be served in the Community Corrections program. On January 19, 1996, the petitioner was found guilty of violating his community corrections sentence and the court increased his sentence from ten years to twenty years to serve. On December 11, 1996, the petitioner filed a petition for post-conviction relief. The petition was dismissed by the trial court on the grounds that it was filed outside the applicable statute of limitations. The petitioner now appeals and argues the postconviction court erred when it dismissed the petition. We agree and reverse the judgment of the court below and remand this cause for a hearing on the merits of the petition.

The defendant was found guilty by a Davidson County jury of burglary and theft of property over $1,000. The trial court sentenced defendant to Range II sentences of six years on each count and ordered them served consecutively for an effective twelve-year sentence. The defendant contends that the trial court erred in finding and weighing the enhancement and mitigating factors and in ordering the sentences served consecutively instead of concurrently. After a thorough review of the record, we affirm the sentence as imposed.

This appeal involves a dispute over the duration of a lease. Defendant John A. McCaskill (McCaskill), doing business as City Sign Company (City Sign), appeals the Chancellor’s order granting partial summary judgment to plaintiffs Max Norton (Norton) and Long Outdoor Advertising (LOA).

This appeal involves the enforcement of a judgment lien where, subsequent to the attachment of the judgment lien, the encumbered real property was sold to a buyer who simultaneously granted a purchase money mortgage to a financial institution.

A jury found the defendant guilty of conspiracy to possess with the intent to deliver over seventy pounds of marijuana; two counts of possession with the intent to deliver one-half ounce to ten pounds of marijuana; and delivery of ten pounds, one gram to seventy pounds of marijuana. The trial court imposed an effective sentence of thirtynine years incarceration, with a total fine of one hundred sixty thousand dollars ($160,000). On appeal, the defendant presents ten issues for review, most of which deal with the sufficiency of the convicting evidence or the propriety of the defendant’s sentence. We affirm the defendant’s convictions and sentence.

The petitioner was convicted by a jury of first degree murder in 1975 and sentenced to death. This Court affirmed the conviction, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by executive action. Hamilton v. State, 555 S.W.2d 724 (Tenn. Crim. App. 1977).