Resources · Paperwork · Post-conviction options

You can do this.
We did.

Karen and Susan filed their first petitions by hand, from inside a women's prison, with no internet, and no Westlaw. They took a Georgetown Law class together inside. Then they did the work. The forms below are the same forms.

Where to start

Four questions. Answer in order.

Post-conviction relief looks like a maze because it is a maze. But every door in it can be reduced to one of four questions about your case. Start at the top and work down.

001

Has it been less than thirty days since you were sentenced?

Then your first door is a direct appeal. File a notice immediately — once that window closes, the appellate court generally cannot hear you on the trial record itself.

002

Has new evidence come to light since the trial?

Then your door is a motion for new trial (within one year) or a petition for writ of actual innocence (any time, Maryland § 8-301). New evidence is the lever.

003

Were your constitutional rights violated in how the conviction was obtained?

Then your door is a state post-conviction petition (10 years in Maryland), and after the state remedy is exhausted, a federal habeas petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254.

004

Has the clock already run out?

It hasn't, necessarily. Actual innocence is a gateway. Under McQuiggin v. Perkins, 569 U.S. 383 (2013), a credible innocence showing equitably tolls federal deadlines. Maryland's § 8-301 has no time limit.

The four doors of post-conviction relief

The same paperwork, in plain language.

Below are the procedural mechanisms that can move a wrongful conviction. Each door has a name in the law, a time limit, and a form. Maryland-specific where applicable; federal where the law is national.

Door 01 · Immediate 30 days From sentencing

Direct appeal.

Notice of appeal & appellate brief

The state's appellate court reviews what was already in the trial record. The argument is that the trial court got the law wrong, the evidence was insufficient, or your constitutional rights were violated at trial. No new evidence may be added at this stage.

Md. Rule 8-202 (notice within 30 days) Md. Court of Special Appeals Counsel often appointed if indigent
Maryland appellate forms → Md. Courts & Judicial Proceedings →
Door 02 · Year one 1 year From verdict

Motion for new trial. Motion to reconsider sentence.

Motion for new trial — Md. Rule 4-331

If newly discovered evidence would probably have produced a different verdict, you can ask the trial court for a new trial. The general window is ten days from verdict, but the window stays open for a full year when the new evidence couldn't have been discovered earlier with due diligence.

Md. Rule 4-331(c) Filed in the original trial court
Read Rule 4-331 →
Motion for reconsideration of sentence — Md. Rule 4-345

Asks the sentencing judge to reduce the sentence. Must generally be filed within 90 days of imposition. The court can grant or deny without a hearing; it can also revisit the sentence on its own motion within five years.

Md. Rule 4-345 Within 90 days of sentencing
Read Rule 4-345 →
Door 03 · State collateral review 10 years From sentencing

State post-conviction petition.

Maryland Uniform Postconviction Procedure Act — § 7-101 et seq.

For challenges based on a constitutional violation — ineffective assistance of counsel, Brady violations, prosecutorial misconduct, illegal sentence, involuntary plea, newly discovered constitutional error. You are entitled to a hearing and to court-appointed counsel through the Office of the Public Defender. One petition per case, plus a limited second petition for newly discovered evidence.

Md. Code Crim. Proc. § 7-103 Filed in original circuit court OPD counsel available
Read § 7-103 → Maryland Office of the Public Defender →
Door 04 · Any time no
limit Innocence-based

Petition for writ of actual innocence. Federal habeas with the innocence gateway.

Writ of actual innocence — Md. Code Crim. Proc. § 8-301

If you have newly discovered evidence that creates a "substantial or significant possibility" of a different result — and that evidence could not have been found earlier with reasonable diligence — you can file at any time. No statute of limitations. This is the door Karen and Susan walked through.

Md. Code Crim. Proc. § 8-301 No time limit Filed in original circuit court
Read § 8-301 in full →
Federal habeas corpus — 28 U.S.C. § 2254

Asks a federal district court to release you from custody on the ground that a state conviction violates the U.S. Constitution. The standard deadline is one year from the date the conviction became final (AEDPA). But — and this is critical — a credible showing of actual innocence is a gateway through which the court can reach all your claims, even outside the one-year window. McQuiggin v. Perkins, 569 U.S. 383 (2013).

28 U.S.C. § 2254 1-year AEDPA + innocence gateway State remedies must first be exhausted
Download Form AO 241 → D. Md. self-represented forms →
Executive clemency & gubernatorial pardon

When courts have closed every door, the Governor has not. A clemency petition asks the executive branch to commute your sentence or grant a pardon. It is not a legal proceeding. It is a political one. Tell the story. Bring the documents. Get the letters.

Maryland Parole Commission No deadline Discretionary
Maryland Parole Commission →
The clock

What's open when.

Read left to right — the windows that open and close after sentencing. The innocence doors do not have an expiration date. Most others do.

Sentencing
30 days · Direct appeal
90 days · Reconsider sentence
1 year · Motion for new trial
1 year AEDPA · Federal habeas
10 years · State post-conviction
Any time · Writ of actual innocence · Innocence gateway

If a door looks closed, ask whether actual innocence reopens it. McQuiggin exists for exactly this. Karen filed federal habeas in May 2026 on a conviction that became final in April 2021 — five years past the AEDPA deadline. The gateway is real.

The forms, themselves

The actual paperwork. Open. Print. Begin.

These are official forms from the courts and agencies that hear these petitions. You will not pay for any of them. You do not need an attorney to file most of them, though the petition will be stronger if one helps.

Form 01 · Federal Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus — Form AO 241

The federal pro se form for 28 U.S.C. § 2254. Walks you through the grounds for relief, the exhaustion of state remedies, and the timeliness section. The form to use after state remedies are exhausted.

uscourts.gov · PDF · ~135 KB Open the form →
Form 02 · Federal District of Maryland — Self-Represented Forms

Local versions of pro se filing packets for the District of Maryland — habeas petitions, in forma pauperis applications, and pleading templates. Use these if you're filing in D. Md.

mdd.uscourts.gov Open the index →
Form 03 · Maryland state Writ of Actual Innocence — § 8-301

The statute itself is the template. The petition must be in writing, state the basis with particularity, describe the newly discovered evidence, request a hearing, and distinguish the new evidence from any earlier petitions. Karen's and Susan's filings are templates of how it's done.

mgaleg.maryland.gov Read the statute →
Form 04 · Maryland state State Post-Conviction Petition — § 7-101 et seq.

Constitutional grounds — ineffective assistance, Brady, prosecutorial misconduct. The Office of the Public Defender represents indigent petitioners in these proceedings; you do not have to file pro se.

opd.state.md.us Office of the Public Defender →
Form 05 · Maryland appellate Appellate Court of Maryland — Forms Index

Notice of appeal, designation of record, briefing templates, motion forms. Use these for the direct-appeal phase.

mdcourts.gov Appellate forms →
Form 06 · Clemency Maryland Parole Commission — Pardon & Clemency

The application for executive clemency. Tell the story. Provide character witnesses, employment records, rehabilitation evidence, and — if you have one — a court order or evidentiary record supporting innocence.

dpscs.maryland.gov Open the page →
What we used ourselves

A Georgetown classroom. An AI. A pen. A spiral notebook.

Karen and Susan built their petitions inside a women's prison without a computer of their own, without a Westlaw account, and without the internet. They did it with the tools below. Most of them are free. All of them are accessible from the outside.

Tool 01 · Education

Georgetown Prisons & Justice Initiative.

Georgetown Law's Prisons and Justice Initiative brings law-school instruction directly into correctional facilities, including the Pivot Program for returning citizens and the Paralegal Program inside Maryland prisons. Karen and Susan took the class. It is real. It is rigorous. It is the closest thing to a law school course you will find behind a wall.

If you are inside, ask your prison's education coordinator whether Georgetown PJI, a state-based Bard Prison Initiative, or a local university's prison-education program operates at your facility. If none does, write to PJI directly — they keep a record of where they're trying to go next.

prisonsandjustice.georgetown.edu · The Pivot Program

Tool 02 · Drafting

Claude. We use it. It works.

An AI assistant can do, for free, what a paralegal used to do for two hundred dollars an hour. It can summarize a 600-page transcript. It can outline a habeas petition by ground. It can compare two appellate opinions side by side. We use Claude every day. It works.

Where it helps most: drafting first-pass arguments, mapping out a timeline of exhausted state remedies, paraphrasing your case into language a judge will actually read, finding the structural pattern in another exonerated woman's brief.

Verify every citation against the actual record. AI tools occasionally invent cases, mis-cite statutes, and confuse jurisdictions. Treat any case it gives you as a lead, not a fact. Pull the opinion. Confirm it says what the AI says it says. Your filing has your name on it — not the model's.
Tool 03 · Research

Free legal databases.

You don't need Westlaw. Three free databases are good enough for almost any pro se petition:

CourtListener · full-text search of millions of federal and state court opinions. Free. · courtlistener.com

Justia · clean, current state statutes (including Maryland Crim. Proc.) and an enormous case-law archive. Free. · law.justia.com

Google Scholar — Case Law · the simplest way to find the leading cases on any post-conviction issue. Free. · scholar.google.com

Tool 04 · Books inside

Books you can have mailed in.

Most state prisons allow inmates to receive books shipped directly from the publisher or a recognized bookseller. The three we used and recommend:

· The Innocent Defender's Handbook — explains every post-conviction door in plain language.

· Federal Habeas Corpus Practice and Procedure (Hertz & Liebman) — the leading practitioner treatise. It's expensive new; libraries often donate older editions.

· The 9th Circuit's Pro Se Federal Habeas Manual — written for self-represented filers. Free PDF; ask a family member to print it.

Who else can help

The people doing this work.

Innocence organizations rarely have capacity to take every case — most accept fewer than 5% of intake — but every one of them keeps a referral list. Write to them. Send your case summary. Ask. They are not your only option, but they are the ones with experience.

Org · National Innocence Project

The flagship organization, based at Cardozo Law in New York. Focuses on DNA-based exonerations primarily; runs a robust intake program.

innocenceproject.org →
Org · Network Innocence Network

Federation of 70+ member organizations, each covering a U.S. region or state. Use the directory to find the one that handles your jurisdiction.

innocencenetwork.org →
Org · Mid-Atlantic Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project

Covers DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Handles non-DNA cases. Karen and Susan are both in their service area.

exonerate.org →
Data · National National Registry of Exonerations

Searchable database of every recorded U.S. exoneration since 1989. Useful for finding cases with facts like yours — and the attorneys who handled them.

exonerationregistry.org →
Org · Maryland Maryland Office of the Public Defender — Innocence & Conviction Integrity

State public-defender resources for post-conviction representation. The OPD represents indigent petitioners in § 7-103 proceedings.

opd.state.md.us →
Org · National Center on Wrongful Convictions — Northwestern

Founded the field. Houses a women's wrongful conviction project specifically — among the only such programs in the country.

law.northwestern.edu →
SKInnocence Clinic

If none of this fits — we will sit beside you and help you make it fit.

We are not lawyers. We were where you are. We sat with the AO 241 by hand. We filed the § 8-301 petition without internet. We learned the difference between Door 03 and Door 04 the long way. If you write to us, we will write you back.

Free. Always. No exceptions.

Take the form. Start the petition.
We will help you finish it.

Get Help →

Free Always No exceptions

About this page. Statutes, forms, and time limits cited above reflect the law of Maryland and the federal courts as of 2026 and are summarized for general guidance only. Citations are to public sources. This is information, not legal advice. Deadlines and procedures vary by state, by case, and over time. Before filing, verify every citation against the official statute or court rule and — when possible — consult an attorney. The Maryland Office of the Public Defender, the Innocence Network, and the orgs listed above can help you find one.