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1 Va. App. 206

336 S.E.2d 907

Williams v. Landon

Court of Appeals of Virginia

Decided November 19, 1985

Court of Appeals of Virginia · decided 1985-11-19

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“(a) Timeliness. -No appeal shall be allowed unless, within 30 days after entry of final judgment or other appealable order or decree, counsel files with the clerk of the trial court a notice of appeal, and at the same time mails or delivers a copy of such notice to all opposing counsel and the clerk of the Court of Appeals.”

quoted by 3 later decisions, including 1 Va. App. 510 - Johnson v. Commonwealth, Sanchez v. Commonwealth

“(a) The times prescribed for filing the notice of appeal (Rules 5A:6 and 5A:11), a petition for appeal (Rule 5A:12), a petition for rehearing (Rule 5A:33), and a request for rehearing en banc (Rule 5A:34) are mandatory .... (b) Except as provided in subsection (a) of this Rule, the times prescribed in these Rules for filing papers may be extended by a judge of the court in which the papers are to be filed on motion for good cause shown and to attain the ends of justice.”

quoted by 2 later decisions, including 1 Va. App. 510 - Johnson v. Commonwealth, 18 Va. App. 580 - Zion Church Designers & Builders v. McDonald

Relies on Parham v. Cortese · Meade v. Cox · Meade v. Cox

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1985-11-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently April 2004

12 state decisions

60198519902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1 Opinion

MOON, J.

¶2 Appellant, Frank Williams, appeals pro se from a decision of the Circuit Court for the City of Richmond dismissing his habeas corpus petition pursuant to Code § 8.01-654(B)(2) on the ground that the allegation of facts upon which petitioner relied were known to him when he filed previous petitions. The Commonwealth claims the appeal must be dismissed because Williams failed to timely file the notice of appeal in accordance with our rules. We agree.

¶3 Williams’ petition was dismissed in the Circuit Court for the City of Richmond on November 29, 1984. Williams filed his notice of appeal dated January 5, 1985, with the Circuit Court Clerk for the City of Richmond on January 8, 1985. A copy of that notice was not filed with the clerk of the Court of Appeals until February 4, 1985. Rule 5A:6(a) provides:

No appeal shall be allowed unless, within 30 days after entry of final judgment or other appealable order or decree, counsel files with the clerk of the trial court a notice of appeal, and at the same time mails or delivers a copy of such notice to all opposing counsel and the clerk of the Court of Appeals.

¶4 Rule 5A:3 provides: “The times prescribed for filing the notice of appeal (Rule 5A:6. . .). . .are mandatory.”

¶5 Habeas corpus petitioners must follow the rules of court just as all other parties desiring an appeal. Meade v. Cox, 310 F. Supp. 233, 239 (W.D. Va. 1970), aff'd, 438 F.2d 323 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 910 (1971). Therefore, for failure to timely *208 file the notice of appeal, the appeal is dismissed.

¶6 Dismissed.

¶7 Duff, J., and Hodges, J., concurred.

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