Supreme Court of Missouri / Mar 21, 2023
Wesley Hatmon, Appellant, vs. State of Missouri, Respondent.
Wesley Hatmon pleaded guilty to two DWI charges and later filed a pro se motion for postconviction relief under Rule 24.035, challenging his Dallas County conviction. The motion court denied relief, and the case was twice remanded by the court of appeals on issues of counsel abandonment. On transfer, the State argued Hatmon's original pro se motion was untimely, which the court of appeals declined to address under the law-of-the-case doctrine. The Supreme Court vacated the circuit court's judgment and remanded, holding that the law-of-the-case doctrine does not preclude revisiting the timeliness of a mandatory Rule 24.035 motion when a mistake was made, and ordered a factual determination of Hatmon's initial delivery to the Department of Corrections for the Dallas County case.