Gilmore v. State

The appellant, William Gilmore, Jr., appeals from the circuit court's summary dismissal of his petition for postconviction relief, filed pursuant to Rule 32, Ala. R.Crim.P., in which he challenged his February 2004 guilty-plea conviction for first-degree robbery and the resulting sentence of 21 years' imprisonment. No direct appeal was taken from this conviction.

On February 9, 2005, Gilmore filed a Rule 32 petition, alleging (1) that the indictment returned against him was defective, vague, ambiguous, and unconstitutional; (2) that his trial counsel was ineffective because, he claimed,…