Rainer v. State

2019 Ark. 42, 566 S.W.3d 462
CourtSupreme Court of Arkansas
DecidedFebruary 14, 2019
DocketNo. CR-12-80
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 2019 Ark. 42 (Rainer 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
Rainer v. State, 2019 Ark. 42, 566 S.W.3d 462 (Ark. 2019).

Opinion

ROBIN F. WYNNE, Associate Justice

Petitioner Shawn Trevell Rainer is incarcerated serving a term of 960 months' imprisonment in the Arkansas Department of Correction for his conviction of second-degree murder. The Arkansas Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction in Rainer v. State , 2012 Ark. App. 588, 2012 WL 5328599, and Rainer filed the instant petition in which he seeks permission from this court to proceed in the trial court with a petition for writ of error coram nobis.1

*464Rainer alleges that trial error resulted in the imposition of an illegal sentence, but because a petition for the writ is not the means for addressing the issue, we deny his petition to reinvest jurisdiction in the trial court. Rainer later filed a motion for default judgment under Rule 55 of the Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure (2018), which we also deny.2

In his petition, Rainer alleges that he was initially charged with first-degree murder as a "small habitual offender." The information in the record on appeal sets out the charge, in addition to first-degree murder, that Rainer was a habitual offender and had been convicted of two previous felonies, one of which was a 1998 conviction for second-degree murder. The judgment of conviction that Rainer would challenge reflects that he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 960 months' imprisonment, with the judgment noting an enhancement imposed under Arkansas Code Annotated section 5-4-501(a). Rainer asserts that during the sentencing phase, the jury was incorrectly instructed to consider his punishment with a "serious violent offender" enhancement under Arkansas Code Annotated section 5-4-501(c) (Supp. 2007),3 without objection from defense counsel. Rainer made similar allegations in his petition under Arkansas Rule of Criminal Procedure 37.1 (2017) without obtaining a ruling on the issue. See State v. Rainer , 2014 Ark. 306, 440 S.W.3d 315 (reversing the grant of postconviction relief on a different claim). In the petition before us, Rainer alleges that the enhancement on the judgment is facially invalid, and he contends that it was trial error to permit the harsher enhancement to be imposed.

Our standard of review for granting permission to reinvest jurisdiction in the circuit court to pursue a writ of error coram nobis requires that this court grant permission for a petitioner to proceed only when it appears that the proposed attack on the judgment is meritorious. Howard v. State , 2012 Ark. 177, at 4-5, 403 S.W.3d 38, 43. In making such a determination, we must look to the reasonableness of the allegations of the petition and to the existence of the probability of the truth thereof. Id.

A writ of error coram nobis is an extraordinarily rare remedy, and proceedings for the writ are attended by a strong presumption that the judgment of conviction is valid. Jackson v. State , 2018 Ark. 227, at 2, 549 S.W.3d at 358. The function of the writ is to secure relief from a judgment rendered while there existed some fact that would have prevented its rendition if it had been known to the trial court and which, through no negligence or fault of the defendant, was not brought forward before rendition of the judgment. Id. The petitioner has the burden of demonstrating a fundamental error of fact extrinsic to the record. Id. The writ is granted only to correct some error of fact, and it does not lie to correct trial error or to contradict *465any fact already adjudicated. Smith v. State , 200 Ark. 767, 140 S.W.2d 675 (1940).

The claims that Rainer would raise in an error coram nobis petition are founded on his allegations that the information was not properly amended and that the sentence on the judgment was therefore invalid, which are not errors extrinsic to the record. Assertions of trial error that could have been raised at trial are not within the purview of a coram nobis proceeding. Martinez-Marmol v. State , 2018 Ark. 145, at 4, 544 S.W.3d 49, 53. Rainer alleges his attorney failed to challenge the amendment of the information. Claims that counsel was ineffective are also not grounds for the writ. Wooten v. State , 2018 Ark. 198, at 3, 547 S.W.3d 683, 685.

To the extent that Rainer appears to contend that he could only be sentenced under Arkansas Code Annotated section 5-4-501(a), he is mistaken. As the State notes in its response, the subsection's notation on the judgment appears to be a scrivener's error because the jury, as Rainer admits, was instructed under subsection (c) of the statute, and Rainer's two previous convictions described in the information charging him as a habitual offender do not fall within the parameters of subsection (a) because one of those previous convictions was for second-degree murder.

Rainer frames the issue as one of an illegal sentence. This court views an issue of a void or illegal sentence as being an issue of subject-matter jurisdiction that can be addressed at any time. Richie v. State , 2009 Ark. 602, at 4, 357 S.W.3d 909, 912. An illegal sentence is one that is illegal on its face. Jackson v. State , 2018 Ark. 209, at 4, 549 S.W.3d 346, 348.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
2019 Ark. 42, 566 S.W.3d 462, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/rainer-v-state-ark-2019.