Chapter § 24.2 The Personal Restraint Petition

• Jurisdiction: Washington

§24.2 THE PERSONAL RESTRAINT PETITION

This section discusses the nature and genesis of the personal restraint petition and its relationship to the normal appellate process.

(1) The personal restraint petition and its genesis

RAP 16.3(a) establishes the personal restraint petition process as "a single procedure for proceedings in the appellate court to obtain relief from restraint." The Washington Supreme Court, in establishing this remedy, consolidated two previously available remedies: appellate habeas corpus and post-conviction relief under former CrR 7.7. See RAP 16.3(b) (personal restraint petition procedure supersedes appellate court habeas and former post-conviction procedure in the appellate courts). For a discussion of the development of this procedure, see In re Turay, 150 Wn.2d 71, 76-78, 74 P.3d 1194 (2003).

The availability of habeas relief in the Supreme Court is constitutionally required. Wash. Const. art. I, §13; id. art. IV, §4. Habeas corpus is a fundamental part of our law:

As generally used, "habeas corpus" refers to habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, which is a writ issued pursuant to a petition or application directed to an officer or other person who is detaining another, and requiring that such person make a return thereon. Although dealt with in both state and federal statutes, this prerogative writ is antecedent to statute and is recognized in both the United States Constitution and our state constitution. "Whatever its other functions, the great and central office of the writ of habeas corpus is to test the legality of a prisoner's current detention."

Toliver v. Olsen, 109 Wn.2d 607, 609-10, 746 P.2d 809 (1987) (footnotes omitted) (quoting Walker v. Wainwright, 390 U.S. 335, 336, 88 S. Ct. 962, 19 L. Ed. 2d 1215, reh'g denied, 390 U.S. 1036 (1968)).

Although the writ of habeas corpus arises from the Constitution, most current applications of the writ arise from statute. The constitutional writ only allowed challenges to judgments that were void on their face. Grieve v. Webb, 22 Wn.2d 902, 158 P.2d 73 (1945). In 1947, the Washington legislature expanded the writ to allow claims that "rights guaranteed the petitioner by the Constitution of the state of Washington or of the United States have been violated." RCW 7.36.130(1), as amended by Laws of 1947, Ch. 256, §3; see In re Runyan, 121 Wn.2d 432, 441-43, 853 P.2d 424 (1993) (discussing history of post-conviction relief).

The personal restraint rules are the current vehicle for habeas claims in the Washington appellate courts, although as discussed in §24.3(1), below, a personal restraint petition may be used as well to address some restraints that do not result from convictions. The "post-conviction relief" branch of the personal restraint petition's genealogy can be traced from the ABA Standards Relating to Post Conviction Remedies (Approved Draft, 1968). In the early 1970s, the Washington Judicial Council reported that Washington did not comply with most of these standards. See Donald S. Chisum et al., Comparative Analysis of the American Bar Association's Standards for Criminal Justice with Washington Law, Rules & Legal Practice (1972). Consequently, as part of a general criminal rule revision in 1973, former CrR...