Page:Kelley v. Gordon.pdf/2

 "On June 16, 1995, a Crittenden County jury convicted appellee, Ulonzo Gordon, of capital murder and sentenced him to mandatory life without the possibility of parole. We affirmed his conviction, as well as the sentences and convictions of his two codefendants in Cooper v. State, 324 Ark. 135, 919 S.W.2d 205 (1996), overruled on other grounds by MacKintrush v. State, 334 Ark. 390, 978 S.W.2d 293 (1998). Gordon subsequently filed a Rule 37 petition seeking postconviction relief which the circuit court denied. We affirmed the circuit court in Gordon v. State, No. CR-96-878, 1997 WL 583031 (Ark. Sept. 18, 1997) (unpublished opinion).

On June 24, 2013, Gordon filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus pursuant to Ark. Code Ann. § 16-112-118(b)(1)(A)–(B) (Repl. 2006), alleging that he was being held without lawful authority pursuant to Miller v. Alabama, ___ U.S. ___, 132 S. Ct. 2455, 183 L. Ed. 2d 407 (2012), and asserting that his sentence to life imprisonment was illegal because he was a juvenile at the time of the offense. Gordon further asserted that the Crittenden County Circuit Clerk entered the wrong birth date on his judgment and commitment order having stated that his birthday was August 18, 1976. However, Gordon claimed that his birthday was August 18, 1977, which would make Gordon seventeen years old and a juvenile at the time of the offense."

Id. at 1–2, 434 S.W.3d at 365–66. On August 23, 2013, without holding a hearing, the circuit court granted Gordon’s petition, vacated and set aside Gordon’s sentence, and reinvested the Crittenden County Circuit Court with jurisdiction to conduct resentencing proceedings. Id. The State appealed, and we held that while Gordon’s claim was cognizable in habeas-corpus proceedings, the circuit court had not followed the procedures mandated by our habeas-corpus statutes and, as noted above, reversed and remanded. See id. On remand, the circuit court entered an order finding probable cause to believe that Gordon was being held without lawful authority within the meaning of Arkansas Code Annotated sections 16-112-101 et seq. and issued the writ. The Director of the Arkansas Department of Correction filed a return, stating that Gordon was in his custody based upon Gordon's conviction for capital murder in Crittenden County Circuit Court Criminal Case