It helps to have some background before assuming that the government will keep an obviously innocent person in jail just because they missed a deadline.<p>The justice system errs heavily on the side of letting people go. For every person exonerated with DNA evidence, there are tons of people who quite likely are guilty but got off for procedural reasons. E.g. just because a warrant was invalid doesn't mean that the murder weapon recovered from the suspect's car doesn't go to proving guilt.<p>At the trial stage, a procedural defect is enough to torpedo a conviction. After the trial and appeals are done, however, a conviction is assumed to be valid. Nonetheless, there are outs. Even after a conviction, 28 U.S.C. 2254 (the habeas corpus law), lets you attack a conviction. It puts up hurdles, though, such as deadlines, to force prisoners to bring their claims in a timely manner.<p>But, and the article doesn't mention this, there's the ultimate out: under McQuiggin v. Perkins, if you can prove "actual innocence" (i.e. that no reasonable juror would've convicted you in light of your new evidence), you can overcome the hurdles in the habeas procedure.<p>What trips up people at this stage, though, is that the overwhelming majority of habeas petitioners aren't actually innocent. They might have new evidence which at trial could've created reasonable doubt, but their convictions are still supportable on the basis of the other evidence that was presented. It's hard for people to think of it this way, but ultimately the justice system has to be based on probabilities. If someone is pronounced guilty after being indicted by a grand jury, tried, and exhausting his appeals, he's probably guilty. You can draw the line wherever you want, but you do have to draw a line, somewhere, or else give up on the idea of putting people in prison at all.