Phillip D. Williams, Petitioner v. State of Arkansas, Respondent

Summary

The court denied Williams’s request to reinvest the trial court with jurisdiction to consider a writ of error coram nobis. Williams’s proposed newly discovered evidence was a witness’s affidavit recanting trial testimony, but recantation claims and challenges to the evidence presented at trial are direct attacks on the conviction, not cognizable coram-nobis grounds. The court held that labeling the affidavit newly discovered evidence did not change its character.