The Court unanimously affirmed the motion court’s judgment rejecting the appellant’s claims for ineffective assistance of counsel and also made a number of procedural determinations related to the appellant’s claim. The Court first found the appellant’s premature pro se motion to set aside her conviction timely under Rule 29.15 and found the motion court’s determination that the motion was untimely clearly erroneous. The Court, however, upheld the motion court’s determination that the amended motion was untimely agreeing that the appellant failed to file the amended motion within 60 days from the time the mandate of the appellate court was issued, and counsel had been appointed. Despite the untimeliness and consistent with the motion court’s decision, the Court permitted review of the claims asserted in the appellant’s motion based on the exception permitting such review where appointed counsel “abandons” the defendant. Although a finding of abandonment normally requires an evidentiary hearing, the Court held that remanding for a hearing on the issue of abandonment would result in a waste of time and resources because the abandonment finding was supported on the face of the amended motion, namely, that appointed counsel used the wrong version of Rule 29.15 to calculate the due date of the motion, rendering a specific abandonment hearing unnecessary.
The Court also rejected both of the appellant’s ineffective assistance of counsel claims upholding the motion court’s ruling. To refute the appellant’s claim that her counsel was ineffective for failing to call an expert witness to testify about psychological shock, the Court presented a detailed description of the evidence presented at trial relating to the Victim’s death and the timeline surrounding the events which “overwhelmingly” supported the circuit court’s finding that the appellant intentionally murdered the Victim with premeditation. Additionally, the Court noted that the appellant failed to allege that the expert would have been able to testify that the appellant was suffering from shock at the time of the murder to a “reasonable degree of certainty” and that the subject of appellant’s shock, allegedly justifying her behavior related to the death, occurred after the crime was committed undermining her contention that such evidence would have altered the outcome of her conviction. The Court likewise concluded that the appellant’s counsel was not ineffective for failing to request a competency evaluation because she could not prove both (1) that the circuit court would have granted such a request and (2) that the evaluation would have shown she was not competent to be tried.