The Habeas Corpus Restoration Act

Correcting Ourselves — Restoring 800 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.

[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 that a denial of legal access shall not prejudice a petitioner; to provide for coordination with Code Section 5-6-39.1 and the Sleeping Giants 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 “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, developed at common law and secured by the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679. Georgia inherited that tradition at statehood and honored it for more than two centuries. Until 2004, no person in Georgia was ever barred from seeking the writ because of when the evidence supporting the claim 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 General Assembly has already determined that this limitation must yield in some cases. Subsection (c) of Code Section 9-14-42 applies to a felony “other than one challenging a conviction for which a death sentence has been imposed or challenging a sentence of death.” A person under sentence of death may seek the writ however many years have passed. The principle that the correction of a wrongful conviction may outweigh the interest in repose is therefore already established in the very subsection this Act repeals; the only question has been where the line falls. It is presently drawn at execution, so that a person serving a sentence of forty years has four years in which to act and a person sentenced to die has none at all.

(5) Georgia is one of only four states — with South Dakota, Virginia, and Washington — whose post-conviction deadline can never be excused once it has run, and Georgia’s four-year period is the longest of the four. Of those four, only Georgia and Virginia also provide no right to counsel in post-conviction proceedings, so that the deadline runs against a person who has neither a lawyer nor any means of excusing it. 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. Persons exonerated in the United States in 2024 lost an average of 13.5 years to wrongful imprisonment. (National Registry of Exonerations, 2024 Annual Report, April 2, 2025.) The three men exonerated from death row in the United States in 2024 had spent an average of 38.6 years awaiting exoneration. (Death Penalty Information Center, The Death Penalty in 2024, year-end report.) Studies estimate wrongful conviction rates of 4 to 6 percent or higher — including Gross, O’Brien, Hu & Kennedy, Rate of False Conviction of Criminal Defendants Who Are Sentenced to Death, 111 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 7230 (2014) (finding a 4.1 percent false conviction rate among death-sentenced defendants, whose cases receive the greatest scrutiny, making that figure a conservative floor), and the Urban Institute’s Virginia post-conviction DNA study (2012) (finding rates of 8 to 15 percent in the convictions studied) &mdash. 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 800 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, subsection (d) requiring only that the court inform the defendant of the periods of limitation set forth in subsection (c) and having no operation once subsection (c) is repealed, 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. DENIAL OF LEGAL ACCESS NOT TO PREJUDICE A PETITIONER

Code Section 9-14-42 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, as amended by Section 1-1 of this Act, is further amended by adding a new subsection (c) to read as follows:

“(c) 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 — no court shall hold the period of such denial against the petitioner in determining whether cause exists under subsection (d) of Code Section 9-14-48, whether reasonable grounds exist under Code Section 9-14-51, or in the application of any doctrine of laches or unreasonable delay. No petition under this article shall be dismissed or denied on the ground of delay attributable to such a denial of access.”

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 15, 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 Sleeping Giants 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.

THE HABEAS CORPUS RESTORATION ACT — 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 (codified)	§ 9-14-42(c) (new)
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 the Sleeping Giants Act

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

← The Sleeping Giants Act
The Conviction Integrity Act →

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