Fourth Post Conviction Petition Claims Untimely Under Statute's Limitations Restrictions

Hooper v. State, Minn.S.Ct., 12/14/2016.  This is Mr. Hooper's fourth post conviction petition.  You can read about the third one here.  This go round he claims to have a recanting witness that entitled him to a new trial.  He has to rely upon one of the statutory exceptions to the two year limitations period; he picks "interests of justice" and "newly discovered evidence".  The district court denied the petition both as untimely under the statute and as barred under the Knaffla rule.

Justice G. Barry Anderson agrees that the petition's claims are untimely under the statute and not within the two exceptions that Mr. Hooper utilized.  The Justice goes on to address one of the Knaffla exceptions - also "interests of justice" - and concludes that Mr. Hooper has not met that exception either because his claim does not have "substantive merit".  This is all window dressing, however, as the court continues to duck the question whether the Knaffla exceptions survived the recodification of the post conviction statute.