that a pro se petitioner must meet in order to plead an arguable claim that he is in fact actually innocent in a post conviction petition the charges in this a case or rose from the murder of a key to johnson whose body was discovered in her car near her home the police arrested johnson's brother and his friend who confessed and identified another man by only the first name dennis as having also participated in the offense they directed officers to speak to a heretofore i known juvenile was later convicted based on that confession how old was he at the time he was eighteen he has now filed the pro se post conviction petition asserting new evidence of actual innocence which includes the doctor ation incriminating himself a quick question regarding under the facts of this case and this may be a difficult question but under the facts of this case what more what more did the defendant have to to have an arguable innocence given that the only incriminating evidence against him was his confession because there's nobody that there were no occurrence witnesses no statements of co defendants identifying him no d n a no friends of governance really no motive so we just have a confession and now we have this newly discovered evidence of a person who implicates himself and says that judge you know there's a question about whether or not he does make the judge does make a comment that the petition doesn't even raise any claims of actual innocence or anything of the sort so it's hard to tell whether or not it's simply that he is  impartially evaluate the merits of this pro se claim at this stage and maybe you don't want to look at it because it wasn't notarized it's that's a possibility that the judge certainly doesn't make that statement in the record of course this court is aware of the recent flurry of cases in the notarized and in the event that counsel can't have that affidavit notarize for a variety of reasons that we can postulate and counsel can file a motion to withdraw and the case proceeds no further than the second stage but to to reject pro se claims specially those of actual innocence of the first stage based on such a technical requirement that only violates the purpose of the post conviction during act which is meant to live really afford incarcerated individuals an opportunity to vindicate their constitutional rights but it's also in contravention of the illinois supreme court's decision in poker player and in hodges which say that a petition should only be dismissed at the first stage if it is frivolous and patent without consideration for the second stage for the same reasons not not simply because the act suggests that that is so but also because as henderson noted there simply isn't reliable access to notorious in prison and so it is his allegations under penalty of perjury i mean whether that those statutes that he cites the illinois civil code of the u s code whether or not that's actually effective you certainly believed he was subjecting himself to those kinds of penalties and the affidavit is extremely the more he can rule the petition to be frivolous and family without merit and so the question is why were the statements of a codefendant enough to overcome that that that here here's the question if wellborn is what we believe a lot yes your position is that we should overrule will board because otherwise we'll board supports it's good law and we're going to follow that good law and you have to give us a reason why that good law doesn't apply here as opposed to saying it was wrong it's not good law i can do they honor that effect i would wish to point out that you were  play which is not just a mere technicality it put puts on has the statement made under oath and verifies to this court that the person orderly making the statement is that person to prevent a fraud being put on  if we were to but it's not as if he's going to get relief if he gets past the first day he goes to the second stage at the second stage he's entitled to more resources than he had otherwise available to him and at that point if his allegations can't even reach the light of day if you don't we want some of these cases where we've seen so many of innocent individual individuals eventually found to be innocent of offenses from you claim you have a second stage and you have a third stage and this state has a history of hundreds of innocent people who have been put in prison and some of them to be electric chair because trial you take satirist feels after take that which is made ten years after the crime down years after he pled guilty but but how conclusive does an arguable claim have to be i thought it only had to be arguably conclusive well and it doesn't have to be so conclusive that we can say to a reasonable degree of certainty that a jury had it heard this individual's testimony that this is not the dentist that was involved that it would have entered a finding not guilty we don't have to do that do the crime and he was limited on accountability theory so he could have been there and not actually taken part i mean here you have to have a david or a a statement from a codefendant where there's absolutely no this has to be someone who not only was there participate at his statement is so detail as to what happened before the brutal stabbing what happened during the getting to the point where the defendant described moving relief we don't do that at the first stage we simply say we look at basically the petition and those supporting documents and say whether or not there's an arguable claim of innocence here i find it hard t notarization another about the evidence in this case the state is wrong to assert that the actor hires strickly requires affidavits the statute reads that it should have attached affidavits records or other evidence and so to require after david determination that the defendant is innocent but merely that the facts and circumstances need to be scrutinized more closely and with respect to edwards which goes in council cites the recent illinois supreme court case that was the subject of their emergency would have not been convicted this defendant needs only to show as your honour's have noted that it's arguable that he's actually in a sense yes justice lampkin points out of course also the merits of that petition were deemed not to meet the hague standard because the affidavit was designed in such a way as to leave open the possibility that the defendant could have been nonetheless guilty based on a theory of accountability and then finally the same points out that pipe was videotaped confession is so detailed that there's no way that this new affidavit could possibly reopen a question with respect to his innocence but i would point out that all of the details in the confession were details that were known to the officers at the time they took the confession either through their forensic technicians through the medical examiner and through the career previous confessions of his co defendants who were in the same police station and being questioned at the same time