Ex Part Moussazadeh (Original)
Annotate this CaseDefendant pled guilty to the offense of murder without an agreement for punishment. On direct appeal, the court of appeals affirmed the judgment (Moussazadeh I). Thereafter, defendant filed an application for habeas relief and the court denied relief because defendant "failed to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that his plea was induced by a misunderstanding of the applicable parole law which formed an essential element of the plea agreement." (Moussazadeh II). Defendant filed a subsequent application for writ of habeas corpus (Moussazadeh III) that asserted that trial counsel's mistaken advice regarding parole eligibility rendered his plea involuntary. The court concluded that Padilla v. Kentucky was not applicable to the facts before the court and its decisions in Ex part Evans and Moussazadeh II were incorrect. The court disavowed its prior decisions in those cases to the extent that they (1) required parole-eligibility misinformation to form an essential part of the plea agreement in order to make a showing of an involuntary plea that resulted from ineffective assistance of counsel, based upon such misinformation and (2) failed to appropriately recognize the distinction between parole eligibility and parole attainment. Accordingly, upon reconsideration, the court granted relief. Moussazadeh III was dismissed.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.