05/28/2020 IN THE COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS OF TENNESSEE AT NASHVILLE Assigned on Briefs January 15, 2020 LUIS JORGE DIAZ v. STATE OF TENNESSEE Appeal from the Criminal Court for Davidson County No. 2012-B-1673 Angelita Blackshear Dalton, Judge No. M2019-01000-CCA-R3-PC The Petitioner, Luis Jorge Diaz, was convicted of six counts of aggravated sexual battery and subsequently sentenced to twenty years in confinement. See Tenn. Code Ann. § 39- 13-504. Following an unsuccessful direct appeal, the Petitioner filed a petition seeking post-conviction relief, alleging, among other things, that trial counsel was ineffective because of his failure to communicate multiple plea offers from the State to the Petitioner. The post-conviction court denied the petition, and the Petitioner filed a timely appeal. Following our review, we affirm. Tenn. R. App. P. 3 Appeal as of Right; Judgment of the Criminal Court Affirmed D. KELLY THOMAS, JR., J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which CAMILLE R. MCMULLEN and J. ROSS DYER, JJ., joined. Jay Umerley (on appeal); and Andrew Chad Davidson (at trial), Nashville, Tennessee, for the appellant, Luis Jorge Diaz. Herbert H. Slatery III, Attorney General and Reporter; Katharine K. Decker, Assistant Attorney General; Glenn R. Funk, District Attorney General; and Tammy Haggard Meade, Assistant District Attorney General, for the appellee, State of Tennessee. OPINION FACTUAL BACKGROUND This case concerns a stepfather’s intimate touching of his six-year-old stepdaughter (“the victim”). Following a jury trial, the Petitioner was convicted of six counts of aggravated sexual battery and sentenced to ten years on each conviction, with two counts to be served consecutively, for a total effective sentence of twenty years’ incarceration. See State v. Luis Jorge Diaz, No. M2014-01685-CCA-R3-CD, 2015 WL 5472288, at *1 (Tenn. Crim. App. Sept. 18, 2015), perm app. denied (Tenn. Feb. 18, 2016). A. Trial As relevant to the issues raised in this appeal, the facts underlying his convictions are as follows: A. R.1, the victim’s grandmother, allowed her daughter, the victim’s mother, C. D., along with the victim, the victim’s siblings, and the Petitioner, to live with her intermittently during 2010. The victim’s mother and the Petitioner had met a few years before in 2008. During this stay, the victim’s grandmother observed the Petitioner interact “pretty well” with the children, but the Petitioner seemed to focus most of his attention on the victim. While staying at A.R.’s house, the victim, C.D., the Petitioner, and the other children would all sleep in the same room. Irene Reed, a family friend, had been keeping some of the children, but returned the children to A. R.’s home when the family began staying there. Upon moving out of A.R.’s home, A. R. continued to notice the Petitioner’s attention towards the victim. A. R. described the family’s living situation as nomadic, with the family moving from houses to apartments intermittently. Around Halloween 2011, C. D. and her children once again moved back into A. R.’s home. A. R. did not allow the Petitioner to live there at this time. Around the same time, ...
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