Bill B: Georgia Habeas Corpus Restoration Act

Correcting Ourselves — Restoring 830 Years of Habeas Corpus Tradition

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NOTE: This is model legislation prepared for legislative sponsors. When filed, the Georgia Office of Legislative Counsel will assign an LC number and format the bill according to their internal conventions. Legislative findings (Section 2) will appear in the session law but are not codified in the O.C.G.A.

STRATEGIC NOTE: This bill repeals the General Assembly’s own 2004 enactment — the four-year habeas corpus deadline. The framing is not “correcting the courts” (that is Bill A). The framing is “correcting ourselves.” The legislature imposed this deadline without study, without deliberation, and without considering its impact on innocent people. It broke 830 years of habeas corpus tradition. The legislature now has the evidence to recognize that it was a mistake — and the precedent of H.B. 176 to show that self-correction is both possible and bipartisan.

[Session Year] LC [Assigned by Legislative Counsel]
House Bill ___

By: Representatives [Sponsors to be identified]
A BILL TO BE ENTITLED

AN ACT
To provide for a short title; to provide for legislative findings and determinations; to amend Code Section 9-14-42 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to grounds for writ of habeas corpus, waiver of objection to jury composition, time limitations, and notice, so as to repeal the time limitations for filing habeas corpus petitions; to provide for refiling of previously time-barred petitions; to provide for tolling during denial of legal access; to provide for coordination with Code Section 5-6-39.1 and the Georgia Post-Conviction Justice Restoration Act; to provide for severability; to provide for an effective date; to repeal conflicting laws; and for other purposes.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF GEORGIA:

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE

This Act shall be known and may be cited as the “Georgia Habeas Corpus Restoration Act.”

SECTION 2. LEGISLATIVE FINDINGS AND DETERMINATIONS

The General Assembly finds and determines that:

(1) Habeas corpus is the foundational guarantee of liberty in the Anglo-American legal tradition. It has existed without a time limitation for over 830 years, from the Magna Carta of 1215 through two centuries of Georgia statehood. The United States Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008), affirmed that the Suspension Clause “affirmatively guarantees the right to habeas review.” For more than 200 years, Georgia honored this tradition. No person in Georgia was ever barred from proving innocence because of when the evidence was discovered.

(2) In 2004, the General Assembly enacted subsection (c) of Code Section 9-14-42, imposing a four-year deadline on habeas corpus petitions for felonies and a one-year deadline for misdemeanors — the first time limitation on habeas corpus in Georgia history. The General Assembly now finds that this enactment was made:

(A) Without any committee report documenting the need for a habeas corpus deadline;

(B) Without any impact study analyzing how the deadline would affect innocent people, persons with newly discovered evidence, or persons whose constitutional rights were violated at trial;

(D) Without any actual innocence exception or safety valve comparable to the federal miscarriage of justice gateway later recognized in McQuiggin v. Perkins, 569 U.S. 383 (2013);

(E) Without equitable tolling, as the Georgia Supreme Court confirmed in Stubbs v. Hall, 840 S.E.2d 407 (2020), holding that Georgia law does not recognize equitable tolling for habeas corpus petitions; and

(F) Without consideration of the practical barriers to legal access that would make the deadline impossible for many incarcerated persons to meet — barriers that the United States Department of Justice subsequently documented in its October 2024 findings letter, including correctional officer vacancy rates exceeding 50 percent systemwide and conditions that make law library access unreliable.

(3) The four-year deadline conflicts with the General Assembly’s own miscarriage of justice exception in Code Section 9-14-48(d), which provides that “in all cases habeas corpus relief shall be granted to avoid a miscarriage of justice” — with no time qualification. A deadline that bars relief for an innocent person is a deadline that compels a miscarriage of justice — the very outcome the statute commands courts to prevent.

(4) The four-year deadline makes Georgia a national outlier. Among comparable states, California, Texas, New York, North Carolina, and Vermont impose no statutory deadline on state post-conviction petitions. The federal system under AEDPA provides a one-year deadline but with equitable tolling (Holland v. Florida, 560 U.S. 631 (2010)) and an actual innocence gateway (McQuiggin v. Perkins, 569 U.S. 383 (2013)). Georgia’s four-year deadline has neither.

(5) The deadline is incompatible with the reality of wrongful convictions. The average DNA exoneration in the United States takes 14 years from conviction. Death row exonerations average over 11 years. An estimated 2,500 or more innocent people are currently incarcerated in Georgia based on nationally recognized wrongful conviction rates of 4 to 6 percent. The four-year deadline ensures that most of these people will never have the opportunity to prove their innocence, regardless of the strength of their evidence.

(6) The retroactive application of the 2004 deadline compounded the injustice. For convictions that became final before July 1, 2004, the grace period for felony petitions expired on July 1, 2008 — meaning some persons whose convictions became final decades earlier had only four years to learn about and comply with a deadline that previously did not exist. Their claims were time-barred before they knew there was a time bar.

(7) The General Assembly has already demonstrated its willingness to correct its own post-conviction procedural errors. House Bill 176 (2025) codified out-of-time appeals after Cook v. State, 313 Ga. 471 (2022), eliminated them. That bill passed the House 168-0 and the Senate 51-0. The Wrongful Conviction and Incarceration Compensation Act (2025) established that wrongful convictions cost Georgia $75,000 per year of wrongful incarceration. These enactments reflect the General Assembly’s recognition that procedural barriers must not stand between innocent people and relief.

(8) The repeal of the habeas corpus deadline is not the creation of a new right. Habeas corpus existed without a deadline for the entirety of Georgia’s history prior to 2004. This Act restores the status quo that prevailed for over 200 years of Georgia statehood and over 830 years of the Anglo-American legal tradition.

PART I — REPEAL OF THE HABEAS CORPUS TIME LIMITATION

SECTION 1-1. REPEAL

Code Section 9-14-42 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to grounds for writ of habeas corpus, waiver of objection to jury composition, time limitations, and notice, is amended by repealing subsections (c) and (d) in their entirety, so that the Code section shall read as follows:

“9-14-42.

(a) Any person imprisoned by virtue of a sentence imposed by a state court of record who asserts that in the proceedings which resulted in his conviction there was a substantial denial of his rights under the Constitution of the United States or of this state may institute a proceeding under this article.

(b) The right to object to the composition of the grand or trial jury will be deemed waived under this Code section unless the person challenging the sentence shows in the petition and satisfies the court that cause exists for his being allowed to pursue the objection after the conviction and sentence have otherwise become final.”

SECTION 1-2. REFILING OF PREVIOUSLY TIME-BARRED PETITIONS

(a) Any habeas corpus petition filed under Article 2 of Chapter 14 of Title 9 that was dismissed solely on the basis of the time limitation formerly set forth in subsection (c) of Code Section 9-14-42, as repealed by Section 1-1 of this Act, may be refiled within two years of the effective date of this Act.

(b) Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit the right of any person to file a new habeas corpus petition at any time following the effective date of this Act, regardless of whether a previous petition was filed or dismissed.

SECTION 1-3. TOLLING DURING DENIAL OF LEGAL ACCESS

In any proceeding under this article, where a petitioner demonstrates that he or she was denied meaningful access to legal resources — including but not limited to law library closures, institutional lockdowns lasting more than 14 consecutive days, facility transfers, confiscation of legal materials, or failure to provide requested case files — for any period following conviction, the court shall exclude such period from any applicable calculation of timeliness or diligence.

SECTION 1-4. GAP COVERAGE

(a) Any defendant whose motion seeking an out-of-time motion for new trial or notice of appeal was dismissed based upon Cook v. State, 313 Ga. 471 (2022), and its progeny, and who did not file a motion under Code Section 5-6-39.1 before June 30, 2026, may pursue habeas corpus relief under Article 2 of Chapter 14 of Title 9 at any time, without regard to the time limitation formerly set forth in subsection (c) of Code Section 9-14-42, as repealed by this Act.

(b) Any defendant whose four-year habeas corpus deadline under the former subsection (c) of Code Section 9-14-42 expired between March 9, 2022, the date of the decision in Cook v. State, and May 14, 2025, the effective date of House Bill 176 (Act No. 252), may file a habeas corpus petition under Article 2 of Chapter 14 of Title 9 at any time following the effective date of this Act.

PART II — GENERAL PROVISIONS

SECTION 2-1. COORDINATION

(a) The remedies provided under this Act are available in addition to, and not in lieu of, the remedies established by Code Section 5-6-39.1 as enacted by House Bill 176 (Act No. 252, 2025 Session), and the remedies established by the Georgia Post-Conviction Justice Restoration Act, if enacted.

(b) Nothing in this Act shall be construed to limit or modify the rights established by Code Section 5-6-39.1, the miscarriage of justice exception in Code Section 9-14-48(d), or the void judgment provisions of Code Section 17-9-4.

SECTION 2-2. SEVERABILITY

If any provision of this Act or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid by a court of competent jurisdiction, such invalidity shall not affect other provisions or applications of this Act that can be given effect without the invalid provision or application. To this end, the provisions of this Act are declared severable.

SECTION 2-3. EFFECTIVE DATE

This Act shall become effective upon its approval by the Governor or upon its becoming law without such approval, and shall apply to all habeas corpus petitions filed or pending on or after such date.

SECTION 2-4. REPEAL

All laws and parts of laws in conflict with this Act are repealed.

BILL B — SUMMARY

What It Does	Statute Affected
Repeals 4-year felony / 1-year misdemeanor habeas deadline	§ 9-14-42 (repeal of (c) and (d))
2-year refiling window for previously time-barred petitions	Uncodified transition provision
Tolling during denial of legal access	Uncodified
Gap coverage for Cook-to-H.B. 176 window	Uncodified transition provision

Appropriations required: None. Effective date: Immediate upon Governor’s approval.
New institutions created: None.

Relationship to Bill A

Bill A creates a functional safety valve — its miscarriage of justice exception overrides the habeas deadline for meritorious claims. Bill B removes the deadline entirely. They work together but each stands alone. If Bill B fails, Bill A still ensures the deadline cannot bar relief where a miscarriage of justice is demonstrated. If Bill A fails, Bill B still removes the time barrier for all claims.

← Bill A: Justice Restoration
Bill C: Infrastructure →

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