Winward v. State
Annotate this CaseIn 1993, Appellant was convicted of sodomizing his girlfriend’s sons and with sexually assaulting a neighbor’s child. In 2009, Appellant filed a petition for post-conviction relief alleging that counsel provided ineffective assistance by failing to inform him about a plea bargain the State allegedly offered before trial. The district court dismissed the petition, concluding that it was time-barred under the Post-Conviction Remedies Act (PCRA). The Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal of most of Appellant’s claims, but before it could issue its decision, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Lafler v. Cooper and Missouri v. Frye. The Utah Supreme Court ultimately vacated the dismissal on the narrow issue of whether these decisions created a new cause of action for Appellant under the PCRA. Appellant pursued a claim based on these decisions. The district court dismissed Appellant’s claim. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that because Lafler and Frye announced a new rule not dictated by precedent existing at the time Appellant’s conviction or sentence became final, they did not give rise to a new cause of action under the PCRA.
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