Court Opinion

ID: 9766830
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:00:10.746733+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:26.576574
License: Public Domain

John I. Purtle, Justice, dissenting. The petitioner filed a request for relief pursuant to A.R.Cr.P. Rule 26.1 on February 27, 1987. He sought to vacate his guilty plea which had been entered some time before. He filed the petition and a form to proceed in forma pauperis in the circuit court on March 11,1987. After having heard nothing on his petition, he filed a petition for writ of mandamus about July 28,1987, in the Arkansas Supreme Court. After inquiry from the office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator, the trial court denied the petition to vacate the guilty plea. The request for relief was treated by the trial court as a Rule 37 petition. The request was denied on September 21, 1988, about seven months after it had been filed. Notice of appeal was filed on October 16, 1987. On October 4,1988, the petitioner filed a form in this court in order to comply with this court’s in forma pauperis rule. A motion for belated appeal and rule on the clerk was filed on November 2,1988, along with another in forma pauperis motion. The transcript, which consists of six pages, had already been forwarded to the clerk of this court. Upon actual consideration of the petition, this court found a procedural error: the transcript was not timely ordered by the inmate. The court apparently fails to recognize that this notice of appeal and request to proceed in forma pauperis were forwarded from the maximum security unit at Cummins. That is hardly a place where one would expect an inmate to be able to contact the court reporter and order the record. The notice of appeal was filed by the petitioner. He was not notified that he needed to do anything other than what he had done. In this case, the court has decided that this inmate is not entitled to the consideration he would have been given if he had been represented by an attorney. A.R.Cr.P. 36.9 governs the question presented in this appeal. This riile requires that the notice of appeal contain either a statement by the appellant or his attorney that the transcript has been ordered or a petition to obtain the record as a pauper. The latter option is exactly what the appellant did in this case. His petition to proceed as a pauper implicitly includes a request for a transcript. Once a prisoner has been granted the right to proceed in forma pauperis, the court should automatically order the reporter to prepare the transcript for the inmate. It would take only a minute of the court’s time. Moreover, the reporter is usually present at the proceedings. Conversely, it is a vain gesture to grant an appeal and then deny the appellant the right to perfect his appeal by refusing to furnish the record. This is yet another example of how far this court will go to affirm the conviction of a person by a trial court. In this case the court has gone beyond the bounds of reason and justice.