Four Biggest Mistakes Contributing to Conviction of the Innocent

There are many mistakes you can make when filing your 11.07 Writ of Habeas Corpus application, but there are four particular mistakes that could be devastating if you accidentally make them, so I’m here today to write about the four biggest mistakes you can make when you file your 11.07 Writ of Habeas Corpus application.

Four Biggest Mistakes

The first and one of the most common mistakes people make is when they do not assert all of their grounds in the initial Writ filing. If you do not assert all the grounds (or, in other words, reasons why you believe your sentence or conviction should be reconsidered/overturned), you will be declined if you attempt to assert grounds previously available to you in the court you were originally convicted in and in most other courts as well.

You must assert every ground available to you the first time, and if you don’t, then all of those grounds are a lost cause. These grounds can only become available to you again if there is a change in the law or you discover new evidence which would necessitate their use.

The second most common mistake is when someone fails to do a thorough investigation. Failing to do a thorough investigation is essentially the equivalent of throwing a bunch of stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks, which is evidently not a strategy that lends itself to success. A thorough investigation is absolutely essential to a good Writ application because 11.07 Writs of Habeas Corpus are about the facts.

They are so much more about the facts than the law that it brings me to the third ground, which is not writing your writ about the facts and instead writing it about how the law is not applicable to you in some way.

A ground alleging some fault with the way the law was or is being applied to you is very rarely granted. The court of criminal appeals wants to see facts that would entitle you to relief, and they want to be informed about things that you know that they do not know. They make the law for the State of Texas as it pertains to Writs, interpret the legislatures, statutes, and they have cases that they determine what and how the law will be decided, so they understand the law.

Thus, it is a bad idea to challenge their precedent relating to the law, so try to make your case more about the facts than the law.

The final mistake people seeking freedom make frequently is simply not submitting their Writ application within one year of their conviction being finalized. If you fail to file your Writ within this time frame, you become ineligible to be heard in a Federal court, which could be a
disaster depending on the type of crime you were convicted for, as well as if your case requires you to be heard in a Federal court.

These four mistakes are highly destructive to your case and can cost you your freedom, so work diligently to avoid them and you will have a much more clear path to freedom from prison.