I recently prevailed on an 11.07 writ of habeas corpus for a client who had been convicted of one of the most serious allegations in the Texas Penal Code — Continuous Sexual Abuse of a Child.

Of course I was elated on the night that the Court of Criminal Appeals issued the opinion agreeing with the trial court’s findings. My client would get a new trial. He would get to bond out like any other defendant and return to his family. We had done what had seemed nearly impossible — convince the Court of Criminal Appeals to give my client another opportunity to fight for his freedom even after a Texas jury had convicted him of a terrible crime (in the face of my client’s continued and unwavering claims of innocence).

But, speaking generally now, it is hard not to feel a ceaseless sense of struggle, even when we win the post-conviction legal battles.

Proving actual innocence in Texas by means of an 11.07 Writ of Habeas Corpus is extremely difficult. Judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals like to refer to the effort as a “Herculean Task” because the Applicant has to essentially refute the State’s original case with new evidence.

Families trying to decide on whether to hire habeas counsel and what amount of resources to spend need to understand the nature of the applicant’s burden and whether other potential grounds for relief should also be raised.

The Applicant’s burden

In Texas, a person convicted of a felony has a statutory right to file a subsequent application for writ of habeas corpus under Article 11.07 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, but only under very narrow circumstances.

Section 4 of article 11.07 controls subsequent writs. It reads:

In a previous post I discussed Open Pleas to judges in Texas.

In this post I want to explore how inmates can attempt to challenge their open pleas as involuntary by using the article 11.07 writ of habeas corpus, and what hurdles they face.

This post is for general research and interest only and should not be considered legal advice. As always, the specific facts of your case matter more than anything else. Please consult with an experienced post conviction attorney if you or a loved one are considering legal action.

Defendants usually don’t realize their guilty plea was involuntary at the time they enter it. This is because involuntary pleas are almost always based on a misunderstanding, misrepresentation, or ineffective assistance on the part of plea counsel. It takes awhile for the defendant to realize what has happened.

Trying to undo a guilty plea is never easy. Defendants often fail to understand the legal significance of what they’ve signed. If you’re regretting entering a guilty plea and want to fight it, ring up a good criminal appeal attorney, because, as you’ll see below, the strategy you need to fight it depends on the procedural details of the case and at what point in the process you realized you’d been crossed, mislead, or misadvised.

In a three-part series, I’m going to describe how the guilty plea is protected by the Criminal Justice System, how a plea bargain is immortalized into a judgment, how a plea open to the court works (and how defendants sometimes get screwed with this procedural arrangement), and how to challenge guilty pleas as involuntary.