In 2003, James Evans filed a petition for postconviction aid following convictions for homicide and solicitating homicide. Twenty years later, the petition nonetheless pending, the Seventh Circuit addressed “inordinate” delay.
In an April 27 opinion, Decide Michael Y. Scudder of the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit decided that James Evans’s 2003 postconviction aid petition nonetheless pending 20 years later was “indefensible,” vacating and remanding a decrease courtroom’s ruling that held Evans had did not met the exhaustion requirement.
