Thomas v. Caldwell
Annotate this CasePetitioner Jerry Thomas was convicted in 2010 of one count of child molestation. In 2017, Thomas timely filed an initial petition for habeas corpus challenging the conviction. The habeas court denied relief in May 2018. On July 1, 2019, the Georgia Supreme Court dismissed Thomas’s attempt to appeal that denial because both his notice of appeal and application for a certificate of probable cause to appeal were untimely. Meanwhile, on March 8, 2019, during the pendency of Thomas’s application for a certificate of probable cause to appeal with the Supreme Court, he filed a motion to correct void sentence in the trial court. In May 2019, the trial court granted Thomas relief and entered a new sentence. In August 2020, Thomas filed a second habeas petition challenging, among other things, the sentence imposed in the 2019 re-sentencing on several grounds. On December 22, 2020, the habeas court dismissed Thomas’s second petition as successive, ruling that the claims raised in that petition “could reasonably have been raised” in his initial petition in 2017. In appealing the habeas court’s dismissal, Thomas argued it was improper because his 2017 habeas petition was filed and litigated before his 2019 re-sentencing and before he raised issues related to that re- sentencing in his 2020 habeas petition. The Warden conceded that Thomas could not have raised claims in 2017 and 2018 concerning a re-sentencing that did not happen until 2019, and that the habeas court therefore erred in dismissing Thomas’s 2020 petition on grounds that it was successive. To this, the Supreme Court concurred and reversed the habeas court ruling.
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