Millsap v. State

2016 Ark. 391, 501 S.W.3d 381, 2016 Ark. LEXIS 318
CourtSupreme Court of Arkansas
DecidedNovember 10, 2016
DocketCR-16-662
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 2016 Ark. 391 (Millsap v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Millsap v. State, 2016 Ark. 391, 501 S.W.3d 381, 2016 Ark. LEXIS 318 (Ark. 2016).

Opinion

PER CURIAM

Un May 1998, appellant Lee Charles Millsap, Jr., also known as Solomon Mill-sap, pleaded guilty to capital murder, ter-roristic threatening, and second-degree battery in the stabbing death of his fian-cée. He was. sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and two six-year terms to run concurrently with the life sentence. Millsap thereafter sought relief pursuant Arkansas Rule of Criminal Procedure 37.1 (1998), claiming his plea of guilty was the result of ineffective assistance of counsel. The petition was denied by the trial court, Millsap’s post-conviction counsel filed a. no-merit brief, and we affirmed the trial court’s order, holding that the guilty plea had been entered knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily with the assistance of competent counsel. Millsap v. State, CR-99-437, 2000 WL 1368040 (Ark. Sept. 21, 2000) (unpublished per curiam).

lain 2010, Millsap filed his first petition for coram-nobis relief in the trial court and alleged that he had been denied effective assistance of counsel when he pleaded guilty and that his- postconviction counsel had been ineffective in that he failed to arrange a psychiatric evaluation before the evidentiary hearing on the Rule 37.1 petition took place. The trial court treated Millsap’s allegations as claims that Millsap was insane at the time of trial and that his guilty plea had been coerced and denied relief. We dismissed the appeal because it was clear from the record that Millsap could not prevail. Millsap v. State, 2014 Ark. 493, 449 S.W.3d 701(per curiam).

On September 4, 2015, Millsap filed in the trial court a second pro se petition for coram-nobis relief and raised the following three claims: that he was insane at the time of trial; that the prosecutor withheld evidence of Millsap’s insanity in violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963); and that his guilty, plea was coerced. The trial court found that Millsap had failed to establish a basis for coram-nobis relief. Mill-sap brings this appeal from the order.

Now pending before -this court is Millsap’s motion for use of the record on appeal and for an extension of time to file an abstract, brief, and addendum. When it is clear from the record that the appellant cannot prevail on appeal of an order that denied postconviction relief, we dismiss the appeal. Wheeler v. State, 2015 Ark. 233, 463 S.W.3d 678 (per curiam). As it can be determined from the record that Millsap could not prevail, the appeal is dismissed, which renders the motion moot.

The function of the writ for error coram nobis is to secure relief from a judgment rendei’ed while there existed some fact that would have prevented the rendition of the (judgment had it been known to the trial court and which, through no fault of the defendant, was not brought forward before rendition of the judgment. Newman v. State, 2009 Ark. 539, at 5, 354 S.W.3d 61, 65. A writ of error coram nobis is an extraordinarily rare remedy more known for its denial than its approval. Howard v. State, 2012 Ark. 177, at 4, 403 S.W.3d 38, 42-43. Coram-nobis proceedings are attended by a strong presumption that the judgment of conviction is valid. Id. The petitioner has the burden of demonstrating a fundamental error of fact extrinsic to the record. Id. We have held that a writ of error coram nobis is available for addressing certain errors that are found in one of four categories: (1) insanity at the time of trial, (2) a coerced guilty plea, (3) material evidence withheld by the prosecutor, or (4) a third-party confession to the crime during the time between conviction and appeal. Id. When claiming insanity as a ground for the writ, the burden is on the petitioner who claims mental illness to overcome the strong presumption that the judgment was valid. Noble v. State, 2015 Ark. 215, at 3, 462 S.W.3d 341, 344 (per curiam). Claims that a petitioner either could- have known, or did know, at the time of trial do not provide grounds for issuance of a writ of error coram nobis. Rodgers v. State, 2013 Ark. 294, at 3, 2013 WL 3322344 (per curiam).

Millsap supported his claim that he was insane at the time of trial by challeng-mg the validity of a court-ordered mental evaluation performed by Dr. Susan Doi, a staff psychologist with the Arkansas State Hospital, wherein Dr. Doi concluded that Millsap was not suffering from a major mental disorder and was competent to stand trial. According to Millsap, the mental evaluation performed by Dr. Doi was “devoid of any substantial testing or recognized diagnosis.” Millsap further contended that Dr. Doi measured his IQ to be 73 14but failed to take into consideration the “Flynn Effect,” which, according to Mill-sap, would have reduced hi's IQ by an additional four points. In addressing Mill-sap’s first claim for relief, the trial court reviewed the trial record and found that Millsap had requested a mental-health evaluation, and that a competency hearing had been conducted on December 29,1997, after which “the defendant had been found fit to proceed to trial by this court.” To the extent that the allegations advanced by Millsap could be considered a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the finding that he was competent to proceed to trial, such challenges are not cognizable in coram-nobis proceedings. Ventress v. State, 2015 Ark. 181, at 6, 461 S.W.3d 313, 317 (per curiam).

Furthermore, as stated above, allegations set forth in Millsap’s first coram-nobis petition had been construed by the trial court as an insanity claim. This court dismissed the appeal challenging the denial of his first petition and concluded that Millsap had failed to present facts sufficient to demonstrate that there was information not known at the time of trial or which could not have been known at the time of trial that Millsap was incompetent to proceed. Millsap, 2014 Ark. 493, at 4, 449 S.W.3d at 704. In that case, this court relied on information and issues gleaned from Millsap’s Rule 37.1 appeal and found that an insanity defense had been considered by counsel at length, and, therefore, Millsap had failed to establish in his co-ram-nobis petition that there was any information concerning his competence of which the defense was either unaware at the time of trial or could not have uncovered at the time of trial. Id.

In this second coram-nobis petition, Millsap specifically raised an insanity claim and supported his claim by contending .that the competency evaluation that had been ordered |sby the court prior to his scheduled trial contained invalid conclusions unsupported by objective analysis. Clearly, the conclusions contained within that evaluation, including the result of the IQ tests, were known to Millsap, his counsel, and to the sentencing court at the time that Millsap entered his guilty plea. When a petitioner’s competence has been considered. by the sentencing court, there is no showing that there existed some fact extrinsic to the record, unknown to the court or to the petitioner, that would have prevented the rendition of the judgment. Westerman v. State, 2015 Ark. 69, at 4-6, 456 S.W.3d 374, 377 (citing Ridgeway v. State, 239 Ark. 377, 389 S.W.2d 617, cert. denied, 382 U.S. 902, 86 S.Ct.

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Bluebook (online)
2016 Ark. 391, 501 S.W.3d 381, 2016 Ark. LEXIS 318, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/millsap-v-state-ark-2016.