Smith v. State

I cannot accept the majority’s rationale for disposing of Mr. Smith’s bid for post-conviction relief. Although the per curium purports to dismiss Mr. Smith’s petition as an impermissible second request for post-conviction relief, this description of what actually transpired is disingenuous.

As is usually the case, Mr. Smith’s Rule 37 petition was handwritten. His so-called first petition was rejected by the circuit court because he wrote a few sentences below the lines on a preprinted form. Specifically, the circuit court found that “[plages (4) four and (6) six of the petition are forty-two…