Georgia Prisoners’ Speak

A Fifty-State Reference for the Blue-Ribbon Study Committee

Challenging a Conviction in Georgia: How the Rules Compare to the Other Forty-Nine States

A fifty-state survey in fifteen questions. Every finding is sourced to a statute, court rule or controlling decision and quoted verbatim.

After someone is convicted, the courts can still be asked one question: was the conviction obtained lawfully? That is narrower than a retrial. It asks whether the State violated the person’s constitutional rights, not whether the jury got the verdict right.

This survey asks how all fifty states answer that question, in fifteen parts: seven on post-conviction procedure, two on the trial record and on weighing the evidence again, and six on counsel for a person under sentence of death. Every answer is sourced to a statute, court rule or controlling decision and quoted verbatim, and 734 of the 750 answers were verified by retrieving the cited source and finding the quotation in it. The evidence behind every number is on the full record page, where each cell names its source.

First: this is not about appealing

Two different things happen after a conviction, and they are often confused. This survey is about the second one.

A direct appeal comes first. It argues that something went wrong at trial, on the record, in front of the judge and jury, and it runs on a very short clock. A motion for new trial must be filed within 30 days of the judgment (O.C.G.A. § 5-5-40), and a notice of appeal within 30 days of the judgment or of the order deciding that motion (§ 5-6-38). The appellate court reads the trial transcript and decides whether the trial was conducted properly.

Post-conviction review comes after that is over. In Georgia it means a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and it asks a different question: whether the conviction was obtained in violation of the person’s constitutional rights, typically on facts that are not in the trial record, such as evidence the State never disclosed, or a trial lawyer’s failures that no transcript would show. It is not a second appeal, and it is not a retrial. Georgia’s courts have been explicit: insufficiency of the evidence is not a ground for habeas relief (Allen v. Hopper, 234 Ga. 642 (1975)), and the remedy for newly discovered evidence is an extraordinary motion for new trial, not habeas (Bush v. Chappell, 225 Ga. 659 (1969)).

The order matters, because it is what starts the clock. The four-year habeas period does not run from sentencing. It runs from “the judgment of conviction becoming final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review” (§ 9-14-42(c)(1)). So a person who appeals gets four years from when that appeal ends, and a person who never appealed gets four years from when the time to do so ran out.

The sequence. Trial and sentence; motion for new trial (30 days); direct appeal (30 days to file notice); appeal decided; conviction becomes final; the four-year habeas clock begins. Everything below concerns that last stage.

How long does someone have to challenge a conviction?

Four years from the date the conviction becomes final (one year for a misdemeanour), under O.C.G.A. § 9-14-42(c). After that the claim is not heard on its merits at all.

The states do not all use the same instrument, and a comparison that ignores that is wrong before it starts. Most states long ago replaced habeas corpus with a purpose-built post-conviction statute, and the figure quoted for them is the limit in that act. Georgia still uses the writ itself. Ranking the two against each other compares a writ with a statute.

Held to like for like, the picture is this. Eleven states set no limitations period at all on the route a conviction challenge travels: California, Hawaii, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Most of the rest set a period that can be excused, by a statutory exception, a good-cause clause or a rebuttable presumption. Four states set a period that cannot be excused: Georgia, South Dakota, Virginia and Washington. In Stubbs v. Hall, 308 Ga. 354 (2020), the Supreme Court of Georgia declined to adopt equitable tolling, and held that nothing follows when a sentencing court fails to give the warning about the deadline that § 9-14-42(d) requires.

What actually decides whether a conviction is re-examined is not how long the door stands open, but what may be carried through it.

The clock can start later, for one kind of claim

Section 9-14-42(c) runs from the latest of four dates, not simply from conviction. Two matter: the discovery of the facts supporting the claim (§ 9-14-42(c)(4)), and the recognition of a new retroactive right (§ 9-14-42(c)(3)). Georgia is not bare here: 19 of the 43 states whose rule could be established have a comparable trigger for newly discovered facts.

The limit is sharp. The clock restarts for facts that were concealed, not for a person who did not know the law. A suppressed-evidence claim qualifies because the State hid something. A claim about a trial lawyer’s failures, visible in the record all along, never gets a new accrual date, so at year four it is gone permanently.

And it is a genuine restart, not a brief extension: a qualifying claim discovered in year twenty begins a new four years.

Is Georgia an outlier?

Yes. Forty-six states either set no limitations period or let a court excuse a late filing. Georgia is one of four that do neither, and one of two of those that also provide no lawyer.

Georgia’s clock can start later, for facts the State concealed (§ 9-14-42(c)(4)) or a newly recognised retroactive right (§ 9-14-42(c)(3)), and that is real: Watkins v. Ballinger, 308 Ga. 387 (2020), held a 2017 petition against a 2001 conviction timely on a suppressed-evidence claim. A later start date is not an excuse. Once the period has run, nothing reopens it: no equitable tolling, no innocence gateway, no good-cause clause, no remedy for a missing warning. Of the four states in that position, Georgia and Virginia also appoint no counsel.

What happens to three claims

A count of rules is one measure. The other is asking what actually happens to three concrete situations in all fifty states, each a constitutional-violation claim, not a claim of innocence. A person who learns in 2026 that the prosecution suppressed exculpatory evidence at a 2005 trial. A person whose appeal ended six years ago now arguing their trial lawyer was ineffective, with nothing hidden. And a person who pleaded guilty six years ago and later learns evidence was withheld.

The dividing line is not between Georgia and everywhere else. It runs between kinds of claim. A claim resting on facts the person could not have known gets through almost everywhere: 46 of 50 states on suppressed evidence. A claim that was knowable from the trial record is barred almost everywhere: 33 of 50 on ineffective assistance.

Georgia is open on the suppressed-evidence and guilty-plea questions, and closed on late ineffective-assistance claims alongside 32 other states. Only four states, Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota and Wyoming, are closed on all three. Georgia is not among them. A statement that Georgia stands alone in barring late constitutional claims describes something this research does not show.

The two measures fit together. Most states have an excuse clause on the books; in state after state it has been construed so that it does not reach the person who simply did not know the law, which is why the ineffective-assistance row is closed almost everywhere. The difference is that those states have a valve a court may open. Georgia has not even that.

What is distinctive: two tracks that never meet

Georgia runs two post-conviction routes that do not overlap. A claim that a conviction was obtained unconstitutionally goes to habeas corpus and nowhere else, on a four-year clock. A claim of innocence based on new evidence goes to the extraordinary motion for new trial and nowhere else: no deadline at all, but only one such motion, ever. Neither track will hear the other’s claim.

After year four, the only vehicle still standing for someone with a constitutional claim is a device built for innocence, which cannot hear it. The system stops asking whether the conviction was lawfully obtained and starts asking whether the person did it, a showing the Constitution has never required in order to remedy a constitutional violation, and one a factually guilty person whose trial was nonetheless unconstitutional can never make.

Where Georgia sits with everyone else

A survey that made Georgia an outlier on every question would deserve suspicion. On where an ineffective-assistance claim may first be raised, Georgia sits with the largest group of states. And on whether the judge whose trial is under challenge may decide that challenge, Georgia is unexceptional: of the 39 states whose rule could be established, 34 allow it. Few states have legislated on the point at all; in twelve nothing addresses it.

Every question except the time limit, reduced to the shortest accurate description of each state’s rule so the country can be read at a glance. The full answer and its source for every state are on the full record page.

What if the person is actually innocent?

Habeas will not hear it late. Once the four years have run, a showing of actual innocence does not by itself excuse the lateness, where 12 of the 38 states whose rule could be established do forgive it, typically on a showing that no reasonable juror would have convicted.

But an untimed route does exist, outside habeas. An extraordinary motion for new trial on newly discovered evidence carries no deadline at all (O.C.G.A. § 5-5-41). It may be brought at any time after thirty days, on a showing of good reason for the delay, though only one is ever allowed. The DNA-testing motion in § 5-5-41(c) is likewise untimed.

So it is not accurate to say Georgia bars a late innocence claim. It is accurate to say the untimed route runs outside habeas, allows a single attempt, and rarely succeeds. Neither motion is a habeas petition; both are filed in the original criminal case, which is also why neither appears in any state caseload count.

Does anyone get a lawyer?

No. Appointed counsel in a first post-conviction proceeding is mandatory in eight states and conditional on a threshold, such as a hearing or a substantial issue, in 21 more; 17 leave it to the court’s discretion. Georgia is one of four states that provide none, with Arkansas, Virginia and Wyoming (Arkansas appoints counsel in capital cases only). Georgia’s rule follows Gibson v. Turpin, 270 Ga. 855 (1999), decided four to three.

This is not a small gap. Georgia’s own court reporting shows that 58.4% of habeas cases disposed of between 2021 and 2025 involved a self-represented litigant, 2,309 of 3,955. Across all superior court case types the figure is 27.7%. In a habeas case the respondent is the warden, represented by the State.

Across the country, the clock and the lawyer trade off. Of the eleven states that set no limitations period, every one provides a lawyer at least sometimes: one as of right, six on a threshold, four at the court’s discretion, none withholding counsel entirely. Of the four states whose period cannot be excused, two also provide no counsel: Georgia and Virginia. The other two, South Dakota and Washington, give something Georgia does not: a route to a lawyer.

Does a person under sentence of death get a lawyer?

This is a separate question from the one above, measured separately, and the two counts are not combined. A witness told the Committee on 21 August 2026 that Georgia is the only state with no mechanism for appointing counsel in capital post-conviction proceedings. The question was put to all fifty states, six cells each, with federal habeas counsel under 18 U.S.C. § 3599 excluded so that no state is credited with a federal mechanism.

The claim holds. Georgia is the only state of fifty with no mechanism. The Supreme Court of Georgia decided the question in Gibson v. Turpin, 270 Ga. 855, 862 (1999), and assigned it: A law requiring appointed counsel for capital habeas petitioners is not constitutionally compelled, and therefore, the decision to create such a law rightfully belongs to the General Assembly. Twenty-seven years later the General Assembly has not created one. The state capital defender is confined by O.C.G.A. § 17-12-12(d) to the trial court and direct appeal; the capital habeas statute, § 9-14-47.1, and Uniform Superior Court Rule 44 are silent on counsel; nothing provides for compensating appointed habeas counsel.

Georgia does fund the work, and that belongs in the same sentence. The FY2027 General Appropriations Act (HB 974, Judicial Branch § 6.7, “Resource Center”) appropriates $900,000 in state general funds, with the same line in the FY2026 Act (HB 68, § 20.1000). A 2005 Department of Audits report (06-05) ties that line to the Georgia Appellate Practice and Educational Resource Center, Inc. and found it 99% state-funded. That is a grant to a private charity, not an entitlement, an appointing authority, a qualification standard or a compensation scheme, and a prisoner the Center cannot take has no remedy. The accurate statement is that Georgia provides state money and no state mechanism.

Gibson was decided four to three. The dissent, joined by the Chief Justice, wrote in 1999 that Georgia was the only jurisdiction that failed to provide a right to counsel in capital post-conviction cases. This measurement, taken in 2026, finds the same thing.

One state is unresolved rather than a second Georgia. Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 7-6-104(c)(ii) entitles a needy person to public-defender representation in post-conviction proceedings “in cases in which the death penalty has been imposed”, while § 7-14-104(c), captioned “No right to appointed counsel”, says the opposite. No Wyoming decision reconciles them, and no one is under sentence of death there. So the finding is stated as measured: the only state with no mechanism, not the only state where a condemned person cannot get a lawyer.

Does anyone check whether a petition has merit?

Not at the start, and nothing flags a promising one for help.

The question is not whether a judge can find a petition meritless; a Georgia judge decides every habeas case and may reject it as groundless. It is whether there is a step at which a petition is assessed early, with something following from that assessment. Elsewhere that step runs in both directions. In Illinois the circuit court must examine every petition within 90 days and may dismiss it as “frivolous or patently without merit”; one that survives is docketed for a second stage at which counsel is appointed (725 ILCS 5/122-2.1). In North Carolina the assigned judge must review the motion, deny it if all claims are frivolous, and appoint counsel if it warrants a hearing (N.C.G.S. § 15A-1420(b1)). The screen removes the hopeless case and finds the one that deserves a lawyer.

Georgia does neither. Every petition takes the same route: the respondent answers or moves to dismiss within twenty days, and the court sets a hearing (§ 9-14-47). A meritless petition is disposed of at the end of that process rather than the start; a meritorious one draws no lawyer at any point. The only merit gate is appellate, and it operates after the petitioner has already lost: the Supreme Court must issue a certificate of probable cause before an unsuccessful petitioner may appeal (§ 9-14-52). Forty-nine states operate at least one mechanism, through a judge, a defender office, or automatic counsel. Georgia is the only state where no merit screen operates before the merits are reached.

One point cuts the other way and should be said plainly. Georgia does have a pre-filing merit screen for unrepresented indigent civil filers: under § 9-15-2(d) the clerk must not file the pleading but present it to a judge, who denies filing if it shows “such a complete absence of any justiciable issue of law or fact” that no relief could be granted. In Hicks v. Scott, 273 Ga. 358 (2001), the Supreme Court held that section does not reach habeas. That exemption protects habeas petitioners: their filings cannot be turned away at the counter. Georgia’s front door is open. What is missing is anything on the other side of it.

Where is the case heard?

In the county where the person is imprisoned, not where the conviction was entered. Of 49 states whose rule could be established, 36 route the petition back to the court that entered the conviction. Georgia is one of two that do not.

Because prisons are concentrated in a small number of rural counties, so are these cases. Georgia’s own reporting shows 91.7% of habeas filings between 2021 and 2025 arose in counties holding a state prison; all 12 of the highest-filing counties hold one; 127 of the state’s 159 counties recorded any filing and 32 recorded none. A handful of rural superior courts hear the constitutional claims of people convicted across the whole state.

Is jury selection in the trial record?

Only on request. Thirty-one states record the questioning of prospective jurors in a non-capital felony trial as a matter of course. Georgia is one of 12 that record it only if a party asks; five leave it to the judge, one has no settled rule and one is contested within its own courts.

O.C.G.A. § 17-8-5(a) directs the judge to have the testimony taken down and, when the judge so directs, the other proceedings except argument. The Supreme Court of Georgia reads “proceedings” to mean matters occurring during the evidence, so jury selection is transcribed only on a specific request (State v. Graham, 246 Ga. 341 (1980); Allen v. State, 310 Ga. 411 (2020): “if a defendant wants a more complete record of voir dire, he must make a specific request to that effect”; Harper v. State, 312 Ga. 684 (2021)). Where death is sought the rule is different, and jury selection must be recorded (Owens v. State, 233 Ga. 869 (1975)).

Why it matters here: a claim that something went wrong in jury selection, including a claim that trial counsel handled it badly, cannot be reviewed on a record that was never made. Nine states, Alaska, Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and West Virginia, separate taking the record down from transcribing it: the reporter records jury selection in every case, and a transcript is prepared only if a party asks for one on appeal. West Virginia states the model in State v. Bolling, 162 W. Va. 103 (1978), adopting the federal practice that reporters “record (but not transcribe unless requested for appellate purposes) the voir dire examination of jurors”. Recording costs little once a courtroom is wired; transcription is the expense, and under that design it stays on request.

Does any court weigh the evidence again?

On appeal, the sufficiency of the evidence is judged in the light most favourable to the verdict: the question is whether a rational juror could have convicted, not whether the evidence in fact supported the conviction. The survey asked whether any court may look without that lens, and whether its answer is reviewable.

Three states (New York, Ohio and Wisconsin) give an appellate court a real power to reverse on the weight of the evidence; four have a nominal power applied through the lens; 43, Georgia among them, have none. A forum without the lens exists somewhere in 27 states: in 24 of them, Georgia included, it is the trial judge alone; in 23 states there is no such forum at any level.

Georgia has the forum. On a motion for new trial on the general grounds (O.C.G.A. §§ 5-5-20, 5-5-21) the trial judge must consider the conflicts in the evidence, the credibility of witnesses and the weight of the evidence, sitting as the thirteenth juror (Weston v. State, 320 Ga. 472 (2024)). What Georgia does not have is review of the answer. The Supreme Court of Georgia “reviews whether the trial court exercised its discretion as the thirteenth juror, but the decision to grant a new trial on the general grounds is vested solely in the trial court and is not subject to our review” (Weston; Meadows v. State, 316 Ga. 22 (2023)). An order that recites only the sufficiency standard is sent back; an order that weighed the evidence and refused is final.

Of the 24 states where the trial judge is the only unlensed forum, the refusal is reviewable for abuse of discretion in twenty. It is unreviewable on its merits in four: Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri and Tennessee. Louisiana’s rule is constitutional (La. Const. art. V, § 10(B)); the other three, Georgia among them, could change it by statute or court rule. Because only three states give an appellate court a weight power, nothing in this survey supports a claim that most states do what Georgia does not. What it supports is narrower: among the states whose only unlensed look at the evidence is the trial judge’s, and whose refusal is unreviewable on its merits, Georgia is the one whose jury-selection record is not required to exist.

Do the exceptions work?

An exception is only real if someone has actually passed through it: a court that reached the merits, or granted relief, by way of that exception. A decision that discusses an exception and then denies relief proves nothing.

Georgia’s newly-discovered-facts route is real. In Watkins v. Ballinger, 308 Ga. 387 (2020), a petition filed in 2017 against a 2001 conviction was held timely under § 9-14-42(c)(4) on a suppressed-evidence claim. The Supreme Court of Georgia reversed the dismissal unanimously, the writ issued on remand, and the grant was affirmed unanimously in December 2022. The court also rejected the argument that a petitioner should have looked sooner, holding that he “was not obligated in the exercise of due diligence to assume that the State was concealing or neglecting to produce evidence.”

Two other Georgia routes exist only in name. Equitable tolling has never been applied: in Stubbs v. Hall, 308 Ga. 354 (2020), the court searched Georgia law for any prior instance and found none. Coram nobis survives as a name attached to a remedy that has become something else.

The exceptions are built to exclude the person without a lawyer

Where an exception exists, it exists exactly as written. What the courts have then done with it is the point: in state after state it has been construed so that it does not reach someone who simply did not know the law. Illinois excuses delay that was “not due to his or her culpable negligence,” but holds that “all citizens are charged with knowledge of the law.” New Jersey excuses “excusable neglect,” but holds that a defendant’s “assertion that he lacks sophistication in the law does not satisfy the exceptional circumstances required.” Alabama permits equitable tolling, but holds that “ordinary aspects of prison life, such as restricted access to legal reference materials or assistance, do not provide a basis” for it. Mississippi requires newly discovered evidence practically conclusive of a different result, which a person who pleaded guilty cannot satisfy.

That pattern matters, and it is not about Georgia. Across five states examined closely, the escape valve is construed to exclude precisely the person it would otherwise serve: the prisoner with no lawyer who did not know what the law required of him.

How often does any of this work?

No one can say, including the State. That is not a gap in this research. It is a feature of how Georgia records post-conviction litigation, and it is worth stating precisely.

The scale

Georgia superior courts are not handling a handful of these cases. Between 2021 and 2025 they received 4,425 habeas corpus petitions and disposed of 3,955, roughly nine hundred a year.

Judicial Council of Georgia / Administrative Office of the Courts, Superior Court caseload reporting, case type Habeas Corpus, calendar years 2021 to 2025. Self-reported by Georgia courts to the AOC. Case characteristics are counted per case disposed, so the self-representation share is measured against 3,955, not 4,425. GPS has asked the AOC to confirm or correct these figures; any correction will be published.

And the outcome is not recorded anywhere

The AOC collects, for each case type, how many cases were filed, how many were disposed of, and the manner of disposition: jury trial, bench trial, or non-trial. It does not appear to record the outcome, whether relief was granted, denied, or the petition dismissed.

Nor can the outcome be recovered from the decisions. Appeal from a habeas denial is not available as of right; it requires a certificate of probable cause from the Supreme Court of Georgia (O.C.G.A. § 9-14-52), granted at the Court’s discretion and refused by unpublished order in the ordinary case. The denials are therefore invisible, and what remains published is weighted towards the petitions that succeeded. A full-text search of Georgia appellate decisions for § 9-14-42(c)(4), the newly-discovered-facts provision, returns eight distinct decisions citing it in the provision’s entire history, against roughly nine hundred petitions a year.

Georgia has not always declined to publish habeas outcomes. The Judicial Council’s Annual Report: Georgia Courts once carried the Supreme Court’s dispositions of habeas certificate-of-probable-cause applications through its FY2013 volume, reporting data through calendar year 2012. In that final published year the Court granted 9 of 449 applications, 2.0 percent, down from 10.0 percent in 2007. Compiled across fiscal years 2003 through 2012, the reports show 3,942 dispositions: 263 granted, 2,793 denied, 780 dismissed and 106 otherwise resolved, a grant rate of 6.7%; that aggregate was quoted in the petitioner’s brief in Wilson v. Sellers, No. 16-6855 (U.S.), and is not printed in the Council’s own volumes. Later reports dropped the table. In Redmon v. Johnson, 302 Ga. 763 (2018), the Court described its own practice in the same terms: it “denies summarily the applications of another 20 habeas petitioners today, as we have denied thousands of such applications in the past (while granting a few each year, including two today).”

What follows from that

No honest success rate can be computed for any Georgia post-conviction exception from currently published data. The 6.7% above is the appellate gate for habeas applications generally, and it stops at fiscal year 2012; it is not a success rate for any particular exception, and it says nothing about what happened in the superior courts below. Watkins proves the newly-discovered-facts route can open. It does not show how often it opens, or against how many attempts.

The distinction matters, because “unmeasurable” would be too strong. These outcomes are recorded, in the county clerks’ files case by case, and by the Attorney General, who under O.C.G.A. § 9-14-45 is served with every habeas petition filed by a person in the Department of Corrections’ custody. They are not published, and not collected anywhere the public can reach. Habeas is already a reportable case type on the AOC’s annual return; the outcome would be one more field on it.

The caution cuts in both directions. A reader should not take a rule recorded as open here as a route that works in practice, and should be equally sceptical of anyone asserting that these provisions are used successfully, since the State does not measure it either.

One limit on the figures above. They describe habeas corpus, which is a distinct case type in the AOC’s reporting because a habeas petition commences a new civil action. Georgia’s other post-conviction routes, the extraordinary motion for new trial under § 5-5-41 and a motion under § 17-9-4, are motions filed within the original criminal case. They create no new case, so they appear in no caseload count at all. Those routes are not undercounted here; they are uncounted everywhere.

What Georgia closed

In most of the country, a person holding a conviction that is void on its face, entered by a court without jurisdiction or void for some other reason apparent on the record, may say so at any time. Twenty-one states keep an untimed writ for precisely that defect. Georgia had the remedy and closed it, and it did so recently.

The statute is still on the books, and has been since 1863. O.C.G.A. § 17-9-4 reads: “The judgment of a court having no jurisdiction of the person or subject matter, or void for any other cause, is a mere nullity and may be so held in any court when it becomes material to the interest of the parties to consider it.” In Chester v. State, 284 Ga. 162 (2008), the Supreme Court of Georgia read that section to reach a void conviction. Sixteen months later, in Harper v. State, 286 Ga. 216 (2009), it overruled that holding, leaving the section to reach void sentences only: the law was “restored to its pre-Chester state, whereby a petition to vacate or modify a judgment of conviction is not an appropriate remedy in a criminal case.”

Chester was unanimous in judgment, with three Justices concurring specially and declining the reasoning that reached void convictions. Harper came down four to three, with the Chief Justice and two other Justices in dissent.

Harper did not leave those claims without a home; it named three remedies. Two of them close quickly. A motion in arrest of judgment under § 17-9-61 “must be made during the term at which the judgment was obtained,” so it expires within months of sentencing. An extraordinary motion for new trial under § 5-5-41 reaches newly discovered evidence, but in Mitchum v. State, 306 Ga. 878 (2019), the Supreme Court held that claims of constitutional deprivation “could be pursued only through habeas corpus.”

What is left is the writ. Habeas corpus can still hear the claim; Harper‘s limit runs on § 17-9-4, not on the writ, and Mitchum confirms it from the other direction: a constitutional claim must be brought there and nowhere else. So the claim is not extinguished by its subject matter. It is extinguished by the clock. A person holding a conviction void on its face has, in most states, an untimed route to say so. In Georgia the same claim has one route, and that route closes at four years, with no equitable tolling to reopen it.

The argument that follows from this sequence is made in full at The Sleeping Giants, Argued, and the mechanics of the writ at How Georgia Habeas Works.

What this means for Vision 2027

This page is research, not a campaign document. But it was gathered for a reason, and the reason is worth stating plainly.

The claim was never about the number of years on Georgia’s deadline. What the survey establishes is narrower and harder to answer:

• When the deadline expires, nothing is left that can hear a constitutional claim. Forty-six states either set no deadline or let a court excuse a late filing; Georgia is one of four that do neither. It runs two tracks that never meet, and after year four the only vehicle still standing is built for innocence and cannot hear a claim that the trial was unconstitutional.
• The one untimed route other states keep, Georgia closed in 2009. Twenty-one states still have it.
• No one is appointed to help, and no one looks for the case that deserves help. Georgia is one of four states appointing no counsel, the only state with none for a person under sentence of death, and the only state with no merit screen before the merits are reached. Its own courts report that 58.4% of habeas litigants have no lawyer.
• Where exceptions exist, here and elsewhere, courts have construed them to exclude the person without a lawyer. That is a finding about the country, not about Georgia.

Those findings map onto the one change Vision 2027 asks the General Assembly to make: repeal the four-year bar in § 9-14-42(c), with retroactivity, so that a constitutional claim is heard on its merits whenever it surfaces. It requires no appropriation.

The Supreme Court of Georgia has already said the system is broken: seven of nine Justices in March 2026, with the Chief Justice calling it a system “no rational person would have chosen” and asking the legislature to act. This page is the evidence underneath that sentence, and the answer to the first question anyone will ask about it: compared to where?

What this does not tell you

These are rules, not outcomes. A route recorded as open is open in law; whether it opens in practice is a different question this research does not answer. A single case proves a door can open, not how often, or against how many attempts.

The ineffective-assistance situation was deliberately written at its hardest: nothing concealed, nothing new, a person who simply had no lawyer. A version in which the claim went unraised because post-conviction counsel was absent or ineffective could produce a different map.

Only three states give an appellate court a real power to reverse on the weight of the evidence. That number is reported because it is true, not because it supports a comparison; a case for changing Georgia’s rule on that point has to rest on fairness, not on a count.

Wyoming’s capital-counsel provisions conflict and no decision resolves them, so the capital finding is that Georgia is the only state with no mechanism, and not the only state where a condemned person cannot get a lawyer.

Of the 350 cells in the procedure pass, 339 are verified against a primary source; eleven are unverified and are listed rather than hidden, six on judicial reassignment, four on the successive-petition bar, one on screening. All 100 cells in the trial-record and weight pass are verified. Of the 300 cells in the capital-counsel pass, 295 are verified; the five that are not (Alaska, counsel standards; Kentucky, counsel standards; Michigan, deadline interaction; New Mexico, counsel standards; Wyoming, counsel standards) are not verdict cells. The three-situations pass covers 550 cells, 543 of them verified by re-fetching the cited source and confirming the quoted language is there.

These limits are stated because they cut against the conclusions above, and a reader is entitled to know that before deciding what the numbers are worth.

The full record

Every figure on this page can be checked. The state-by-state tables for all fifteen questions, the deadline table by instrument, the standard each cell had to meet, how each was verified, the cells that could not be verified, and the corrections made since publication are all on Post-Conviction Procedure in All Fifty States: The Full Record.

This survey was built for the Georgia House Blue-Ribbon Study Committee on Criminal Post-Conviction Litigation, and published in full so that anyone can check it.