McElrath v. State, 21447
| Decision Date | 12 May 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 21447,21447 |
| Citation | 276 S.C. 282,277 S.E.2d 890 |
| Court | South Carolina Supreme Court |
| Parties | Johnnie McELRATH, Appellant, v. STATE of South Carolina, Respondent. |
Staff Atty. David W. Carpenter, of S. C. Commission of Appellate Defense, Columbia, for appellant.
Atty. Gen. Daniel R. McLeod and Asst. Atty. Gen. William K. Moore, Columbia, for respondent.
This appeal is from the denial of an application for post conviction relief. We affirm.
In 1959 appellant Johnnie McElrath was found guilty of escape, robbery and larceny during the fall term of the Court of General Sessions for Sumter County. He was sentenced to a one year period of confinement for the robbery and larceny offenses and a concurrent term of nine months for escape. Appellant now seeks relief from these convictions on the ground he was an indigent not represented by counsel. See Pickelsimer v. Wainwright, 375 U.S. 2, 84 S.Ct. 80, 11 L.Ed.2d 41 (1963), applying the appointed counsel requirement of Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963) retroactively.
The instant application was filed by appellant some seventeen years after his sentences on the challenged convictions had run, and while serving a four-year term for an unrelated crime.
We concur with the trial judge's finding that laches bars appellant's claim for collateral relief from a conviction and sentence now more than twenty years old. In the absence of some explanation or justification for delay in seeking post conviction relief as in this case, the federal courts have held delays of seventeen years, Johnson v. Riddle, 562 F.2d 312 (4th Cir. 1977), and fifteen years, Honeycutt v. Ward, 612 F.2d 36 (2nd Cir. 1979), are sufficient time bars. Reasonable diligence in processing claims for relief is not an unjust, or unconstitutional, requirement in cases of this sort. The court in Honeycutt v. Ward, ibid at 42, imposed it thusly:
The trial judge also found appellant lacked standing to bring this action in the absence of incarceration or direct threat of...
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Atkins v. Moore, C.A. No. 3:96-2859-22 (D. S.C. 6/10/1997)
...apply the laches doctrine to claims such as Petitioner's, initiated 16 years after his conviction. For example, in McElrath v. State, 277 S.E.2d 890 (S.C. 1981), the court found that laches barred an application for postconviction relief 20 years after the conviction date, in the absence of......
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Cole v. State
...some explanation of justification in seeking post-conviction relief is sufficient in itself to time bar the claim. In McElrath v. State, 276 S.C. 282, 277 S.E.2d 890 (1981), the South Carolina court considered a post-conviction relief claim from a conviction and sentence more than seventeen......
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Creighton v. State
...diligence, he could not have known of the grounds for the petition before the prejudice occurred." See also McElrath v. State, 276 S.C. 282, 277 S.E.2d 890 (1981), applying the doctrine to preclude post-conviction relief; and cf. State v. Larson, 409 N.W.2d 63 (Minn.1987) and Brewer v. Stat......
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Johnson v. State
...and yet did not petition for relief on that basis until 1971, did not act with due diligence in seeking relief."); McElrath v. State, 276 S.C. 282, 277 S.E.2d 890, 890 (1981) ("We concur with the trial judge's finding that laches bars appellant's claim for collateral relief from a convictio......