How to Fill Out and File the Post-Conviction Relief Form

To challenge a conviction or sentence after your direct appeal has ended, a state prisoner fills out form AO 241 and files it with the clerk of the U.S. district court, along with a $5 fee or a request to proceed without paying. That form — the federal habeas corpus petition — is what most people mean when they ask how to fill out and file the post-conviction relief form, and getting it right depends on three things: meeting a strict one-year deadline, exhausting your state remedies first, and stating each ground with specific facts rather than legal argument.¹²

State-court post-conviction petitions are a separate track filed in the court that convicted you, and each state has its own form and rules. The instructions below cover the federal petition. If you are a federal prisoner rather than a state prisoner, you file under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 rather than § 2254, and the same one-year deadline applies.³

Check the Deadline Before You Do Anything Else

You have one year to file. The clock starts on the latest of four dates:⁴

The date your conviction became final, meaning the end of your direct appeal or the expiration of the 90 days to petition the U.S. Supreme Court for certiorari.
The date an unconstitutional government-created obstacle to filing was removed.
The date the Supreme Court recognized a new constitutional right and made it retroactive.
The date you could first have discovered the factual basis of your claim through reasonable diligence.

The clock pauses while a properly filed state post-conviction application is actually pending in state court. It does not pause because you are gathering evidence or thinking about filing. Missing the one-year deadline will almost certainly get your petition dismissed.

Exhaust State Remedies First

A federal court will not hear a claim you have not first presented to the state courts, either on direct appeal or through a state post-conviction proceeding.⁴ A claim is unexhausted if you still have any available state procedure to raise it. The only exceptions are when no state process exists or the state process would be ineffective at protecting your rights.

A related trap is procedural default: if you had the chance to raise a claim in state court and did not, that claim is generally barred in federal court too, unless you can show cause for the default and actual prejudice, or that a fundamental miscarriage of justice (such as actual innocence) would result from enforcing the bar. Practically, this means filing your state petition well before your federal one-year window closes, so state review can finish and you still have time left on the federal clock.

Get the Form

Any federal district court clerk’s office will provide AO 241 free of charge. The petition must substantially follow this form or a form prescribed by local district court rules.⁵ You can type, print, or handwrite it. It just has to be legible.

Filling Out AO 241

Caption and Identification

At the top, enter your name as it appears on the conviction, your prisoner number, and the facility where you are held. The respondent is normally the warden or superintendent of that facility.⁶ Enter the U.S. district court where you are filing and the docket number if one has been assigned.

Conviction Details (Questions 1–5)

These questions ask for the name and location of the court that convicted you, the criminal case number, the conviction date, the sentencing date, the offenses, and the sentence.¹ Get them right. A wrong case number or sentencing date can delay the court’s ability to pull your state record. If you do not know the exact case number, say so, and provide whatever identifying information you have.

Appellate and Post-Conviction History (Questions 6–11)

The form asks whether you appealed, the results, and whether you filed any earlier post-conviction petitions or habeas applications. The court uses this to check exhaustion and to determine whether your filing is a first petition or a successive one.¹ List every prior filing, even the losing ones. Omitting a prior petition looks like you are trying to evade the successive-petition restrictions.

Grounds for Relief and Supporting Facts (Question 12)

This is the core of the petition. The form gives you space for up to four grounds, with room to attach more pages. For each ground, state the constitutional right violated and then describe the supporting facts. The instructions are explicit: state the specific facts, do not argue law or cite cases.⁶

“My lawyer was ineffective” is not a ground. You need to say what your lawyer specifically did or failed to do — did not interview a named witness, failed to object to particular evidence, misstated the sentencing exposure before a plea — and what difference it would have made. Write as if the judge knows nothing about your case beyond what you put on the page. Vague complaints will not survive preliminary review.

For each ground, the form also asks whether you raised the issue on direct appeal and whether you raised it in any state post-conviction proceeding. If you did not, explain why. Ignoring this question is one of the fastest ways to get a petition dismissed for failure to exhaust.

Timeliness (Question 18)

If your conviction became final more than a year ago, explain why the petition is still timely. Show the date the conviction became final, any periods when the clock was tolled by a pending state application, any later trigger date (a retroactive Supreme Court ruling, newly discovered facts, a removed government obstacle), and do the math so it comes out to less than one year.⁶

Signature and Verification

The petition must be signed under penalty of perjury.⁵ The signature block on AO 241 includes a declaration that everything is true and correct and asks for the date you placed the petition in the prison mailing system.¹ Sign with a pen. An unsigned petition will be returned.

What Counts as a Ground

You cannot simply argue that the jury got it wrong. The grounds most commonly raised are these:

Ineffective assistance of counsel. Under Strickland v. Washington, you must show that your trial lawyer’s performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness and that the deficient performance created a reasonable probability the outcome would have been different.⁷

Prosecution suppressed favorable evidence. Under Brady v. Maryland, withholding evidence favorable to the accused violates due process when the evidence is material to guilt or punishment.⁸ Identify what was withheld, why it was favorable, and why it likely would have changed the outcome.

New evidence of innocence. Under the gateway from Schlup v. Delo, you must show that in light of the new evidence, it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have found you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.⁹ DNA results, recanted testimony, or a new witness who places someone else at the scene are the usual examples.

Retroactive constitutional rulings. A new substantive rule of constitutional law applies to convictions already final. The Supreme Court held in Montgomery v. Louisiana that state collateral review courts must give retroactive effect to such rules.¹⁰

Involuntary plea. If your guilty plea was the product of coercion, threats, or a fundamental misunderstanding of the consequences — for example, you were told you faced a five-year maximum when the real maximum was twenty — the plea was not knowing and voluntary. Describe exactly what you were told, by whom, and how it differed from the truth.

Filing the Petition

File with the clerk of the U.S. district court. Submit the original plus two copies, along with either the $5 filing fee or a motion to proceed in forma pauperis.⁵ The $5 fee is set by federal statute.²

If You Cannot Afford the Fee

File a motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis with a sworn affidavit of poverty. You must also include a certificate from the warden or other institutional official showing the amount of money in your prison trust account.⁵ Under the in forma pauperis statute, a prisoner bringing a civil action must also submit a certified trust account statement covering the six months before the filing.¹¹ Request that statement from your facility’s accounting office well before the deadline. Institutional paperwork can take weeks.

The Prison Mailbox Rule

If you are incarcerated, your petition counts as filed on the date you deposit it in the prison’s internal mailing system, not the date the court receives it. The Supreme Court established this in Houston v. Lack.¹² To prove timely filing, include a declaration under 28 U.S.C. § 1746 or a notarized statement giving the deposit date and confirming first-class postage was prepaid.⁵ If your facility has a legal-mail system, use it. That is what the court will look at.

What Happens After You File

The clerk forwards the petition to a judge, who promptly examines it. At this preliminary stage, the judge can dismiss the petition outright if it plainly appears from the face of the filing and any attached exhibits that you are not entitled to relief.⁵ Petitions cut at this stage are typically the obviously untimely, those raising claims already decided on direct appeal, or those alleging no constitutional violation at all.

If your petition survives, the judge orders the state (usually through the attorney general’s office) to file a response within a set period. The response is often an answer or a motion to dismiss, arguing procedural bar, prior litigation, or lack of merit. The clerk serves your petition on the respondent and the state attorney general.

When the written submissions raise genuinely disputed factual questions, such as whether your lawyer actually discussed a plea offer with you, the court may hold an evidentiary hearing where you present witnesses and evidence. In most cases the judge decides based on the written filings and the existing state court record.

Do Not Count on a Lawyer

There is no constitutional right to counsel in post-conviction proceedings. In Pennsylvania v. Finley, the Supreme Court held that the right to appointed counsel extends only through the first appeal of right.¹³ Some states provide counsel by statute for certain post-conviction proceedings, and a federal court may appoint counsel in a habeas case if it finds the interests of justice require it. Most petitioners argue their claims without one, which is why the quality of what you put on the form matters so much.

Make the First Petition Count

Second or successive federal habeas petitions are heavily restricted. Any claim you already raised will be dismissed if raised again. A new claim will be dismissed unless it relies on a new rule of constitutional law the Supreme Court has made retroactive, or is based on facts that could not have been discovered earlier through reasonable diligence and that would establish by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable factfinder would have found you guilty.⁴

Even to file a second petition in district court, you first need permission from the court of appeals. A three-judge panel reviews your motion and decides within 30 days whether it makes a prima facie showing that meets the statutory requirements. The panel’s decision is final and cannot be appealed or made the subject of a certiorari petition.⁴ Put every viable ground in the first petition.

Appealing a Denial

If the district court denies your petition, you cannot simply file a notice of appeal. You first need a Certificate of Appealability. The district court must issue or deny the certificate when it enters a final order against you. To obtain one, you must make a substantial showing that reasonable jurists could debate whether the petition should have been resolved differently. If the district court denies the certificate, you can ask the court of appeals for one under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 22.⁵ Without one, the denial stands.

1
United States Courts. AO 241 – Petition for Relief From a Conviction or Sentence By a Person in State Custody
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S.C. 1914 – District Court; Filing and Miscellaneous Fees
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S.C. 2255 – Federal Custody; Remedies on Motion Attacking Sentence
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S.C. 2244 – Finality of Determination
5
United States Courts. Rules Governing Section 2254 Cases in the United States District Courts
6
United States Courts. AO 241 Petition Instructions
7
Supreme Court of the United States. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984)
8
Justia. Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963)
9
Justia. Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298 (1995)
10
Justia. Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. 190 (2016)
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S.C. 1915 – Proceedings In Forma Pauperis
12
Justia. Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266 (1988)
13
Supreme Court of the United States. Pennsylvania v. Finley, 481 U.S. 551 (1987)