NASHVILLE – Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Barry Steelman has presided over criminal trials in Chattanooga for nearly a quarter century.
But now, after a Tennessee Supreme Court temporary appointment made last week, the former assistant prosecutor will serve a stint on one of the state’s new, special three-judge panels created by state lawmakers earlier this year to hear constitutional and other challenges to state laws, rules and executive orders.
Steelman will join Davidson County Chancellor Anne C. Martin and Shelby County Criminal Court Judge J. Robert Carter Jr., also a former assistant prosecutor, with hearing and deciding one specific case, an appeal filed by a Madison County man who in 1999 pleaded guilty to reduced aggravated rape-related charges.
Martin had previously ruled against the plaintiff, Tarrance Woods, who sued Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch and other state officials because Woods doesn’t like having his name remaining on the state’s Sex Offender Registry.
Woods was originally charged with aggravated burglary and aggravated rape. The burglary charge was dropped and the aggravated rape charge reduced to facilitation of aggravated rape in a negotiated plea agreement with prosecutors, according to a 2004 Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals Court decision.