Postconviction relief petition due 180 days after the written transcript is filed
The Ohio Supreme Court deserves credit for their decision today in State v. Everette, 2011-Ohio-2856. This decision is good for indigent defendants. Thomas Everette qualified for appointed counsel on appeal in Montgomery County. Appointed counsel are not paid well for appeals and the appointed counsel is not paid at all if they decide to do a petition for postconviction relief. Everette asked for appointed counsel to help him with a postconviction petition but the Second District Court of Appeals for Montgomery County said "no." The Court of Appeals said, "a matter for post-conviction relief is considered civil in nature, and therefore, counsel need not be appointed." Yikes! The end result is that many indigent criminal defendants in Ohio have to do PCR petitions themselves (pro se).
If that were not bad enough, Montgomery County has gotten away from using actual live court reporters in their courtrooms. Instead, they use recording equipment to record proceedings. So the first thing you get when you ask for a transcript for your appeal is a disk which contains recordings of court action in the case. Appellate Rule 9 says that a videotape recording constitutes the transcript. And a petition for postconviction relief is due 180 days after the transcript is filed. So when Everette filed his petition for postconviction relief on April 8, 2009, the Montgomery County trial judge and Court of Appeals said he was too late. He had to file it by February 22, 2009, which was 180 days after the videos were filed.
How many prisoners have the ability to view recordings of their trials? And even if they could, the court would want parts of the record relied upon to be put into written transcript form. That puts indigent defendants in a tough spot. Their appointed counsel (for the direct appeal) requests the "transcripts," disks are filed containing videos, and the clock starts to run on the poor defendant who is stuck (in most cases) doing the pcr petition himself/herself. Their appointed counsel likely do not send the disks to prison, and Everette was fortunate to even get a copy of the written transcript and to get his petition in within 180 days of when the written transcript was filed.
Granting some relief to indigent defendants, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled today that the 180 day time period begins to run from when the written transcript is filed (and not from when the videos are filed as the trial judge and court of appeals ruled). Sometimes rulings comport with common sense. This is one of those times.
