Opinion ID: 1872110
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Intervening Decision Exception to Time Bar

Text: Excepted from the three year statute of limitations are those cases in which the prisoner can demonstrate that there has been an intervening decision of the supreme court of either the State of Mississippi or the United States which would have actually adversely affected the outcome of his conviction or sentence. See Miss. Code Ann. § 99-39-5(2) and § 99-39-23(6) (Supp. 1991). Patterson contends that Vittitoe v. State, 556 So.2d 1062 (Miss. 1990), and Schmitt v. State, 560 So.2d 148 (Miss. 1990), qualify under this exception and operate to excuse his procedural default. One of the claims contained in Patterson's Motion To Vacate Guilty Plea filed in the lower court was that his 1983 plea of guilty to armed robbery, a conviction for which he received twenty (20) years, was involuntary because he was not advised, and did not know, the maximum or the mandatory minimum penalty for the offense. To be sure, the transcript of the plea-qualification hearing, while containing references to the reading by the defendant of the prosecutor's recommendation and the filing by Patterson of the defendant's position on sentencing, does not affirmatively reflect that Patterson was so advised. While it may appear, given the contours of our holding in Vittitoe, that Patterson has a facially viable post-conviction claim, his claim, whether meritorious or not, is time-barred by virtue of § 99-39-5(2). It will not be reviewed by this Court absent a finding the claim is embraced by the statutory exceptions. Patterson states in his appellate brief he ... is not barred by the three year statute of limitations in that [his] claims for relief arose subsequent to the recent decisions rendered by this... Court in Vittitoe ... and Schmitt ... According to Patterson [t]he language of the Post Conviction Relief Act has operated to bar defendant from asserting claims which he only became aware of because of the recent rulings by this ... Court. We are sympathetic but not persuaded. Our decision in Vittitoe is based on the failure of the trial court to follow the mandates of Miss.Unif.Crim.R.Cir.Ct.Prac. 3.03 (1979). Vittitoe does not qualify under the intervening decision exception because this exception applies only to those decisions that create new intervening rules, rights, or claims that did not exist at the time of the prisoner's conviction or during the three (3) year period circumscribed by the statute of limitations. Far from creating a new rule, right, or claim, Vittitoe simply recognized and applied a pre-existing rule, a rule that had been in existence for at least four years when Patterson entered his 1983 plea of guilty in Lamar County. [1] Stated differently, the requirements of Rule 3.03 existed at the time Patterson entered his plea. The rule was just as available to him between November 28, 1983, and April 17, 1987, as it was to Joseph Vittitoe between May 31, 1983, when Vittitoe, a first offender, entered his plea, and November 9, 1984, when Vittitoe, unlike Patterson, filed a timely motion for post-conviction collateral relief. Patterson's reliance upon Rule 3.03 is reflected in paragraph IV.(a) and paragraph VI.(1)(c) of his motion to vacate guilty plea. Indeed, Patterson, a six (6) time felony offender with a twelfth grade education, freely admits in his reply brief that these settled principles were in place before he entered his plea in 1983. Since Patterson's motion was filed well beyond the three (3) year statute of limitations, and because Vittitoe is not an intervening decision within the meaning and purview of the statute, the trial judge was correct in overruling the prisoner's motion to vacate guilty plea on the basis of a procedural default.