A woman by the name of Yovonda Sherith Chambers filed an appeal in the court of Criminal Appeals of Tennessee after a conviction in the courtroom of Judge David Bragg in Rutherford County. Chambers appealed a denial of her petition for post-conviction relief, arguing that she received ineffective assistance of counsel and that her guilty pleas were unknowing and involuntary.
Looking back to what landed Chambers in court to begin with, she was indicted in 2010 by a Rutherford County Grand Jury on four charges of identity theft and one charge of forgery. She later pled guilty to four counts of identity theft under a plea agreement for “judicial diversion” and was placed on probation. Under “judicial diversion” no jail time is served and your record is wiped clean after you have successfully completed the probation period. However, in 2011 she violated her probation and the original guilty plea was entered as a final judgment of conviction. In other words, the charges were not released from her record. After realizing what had occurred she later alleged that her trial counsel was deficient for not explaining to her the difference between judicial and pretrial diversion.
After the Appeals Court in Nashville heard the argument of Chambers, they sided with the original courts in Rutherford County and affirmed the denial of the petition for post conviction relief, according to court documents filed on October 18th.
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