Oscar T. Berry v. State of Tennessee

Petitioner, Oscar Berry, was convicted of first degree murder in 1991 and was sentenced to life imprisonment.  He filed a direct appeal of his conviction, which was dismissed by this Court in 1992.  State v. Oscar Thomas Berry, No. 01-C01-9201-CR-00033, 1992 WL 275402 (Tenn. Crim. App., at Nashville, Oct. 8, 1992).  His petition for post-conviction relief, filed in 1997, was dismissed by the trial court as untimely.  In 2013, Petitioner filed a motion to reopen the post-conviction proceedings.  He contended that several recent decisions by the United States Supreme Court established constitutional rights in post-conviction proceedings that did not exist at the time of his conviction, thereby allowing his case to be re-opened under the authority of Tennessee Code Annotated §  40-30-117(a)(1).  The trial court rejected his theory and dismissed his motion.  After careful review of the controlling law, we affirm.