A convicted drug offender whose request for a new trial was previously rejected by two different courts recently brought a civil action against Clarke County Superior Court in yet another bid to challenge the legality of his conviction.
Keith Marshall Hall, 50, filed a writ of habeas corpus in civil court on Aug. 5.
Habeas corpus is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court to determine whether their detention was lawful.
Western Judicial Circuit Judge H. Patrick Haggard promptly dismissed the writ on Aug.6, ruling that Hall had improperly named Superior Court as the defendant in the civil action.
Hall based his challenge to the court on the grounds: “I am not guilty, “I was set up and framed by an Athens-Clarke County Police Department confidential informant,” and he had received “insufficient” counsel by a public defender who failed to subpoena the confidential informant and other witnesses.
Hall had filed a motion in Superior Court for a new trial in February 2018, but it was denied.
He tried again by taking his case to the Georgia Court of Appeals, which upheld his conviction in August 2018.
According to court records and the Georgia Department of Corrections, Hall was paroled from prison in September 2018 and his probation was transferred to Newberry, South Carolina.
Hall’s sentence is set to expire in October 2022.
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