Delaware Superior Court Rules of Special Procedure – 2026
A single rule, and an unusual one. When the General Assembly rewrote Delaware's habitual offender statute in 2016 it opened a path for people already serving sentences imposed under the old version to ask for modification, and the Superior Court adopted this special rule to govern how those petitions are brought and decided. Special Rule of Procedure 2017-1 sets out the whole sequence: the Office of Defense Services represents the petitioner unless private counsel is retained; nothing may be filed until a judge issues a CERTIFICATE OF ELIGIBILITY, which counsel of record must request and support with specific averments about the petitioner's sentence and time served; the Attorney General responds stating whether the petitioner is serving a qualifying sentence and meets the time requirement; and only then may the petition itself be filed, setting out every ground for modification, a complete accounting of prior convictions, the petitioner's conduct while incarcerated, and the results of a formal risk assessment. The court may dismiss summarily on the papers. The rule is numbered by year rather than in the Superior Court's ordinary series and is cited "Del. Super. Ct. Spec. R. 2017-1"; the current version took effect February 1, 2020 and applies to every pending or later-filed modification request.
Browse all 1 rules of the 2026 edition below. Each rule includes the full text, a plain-English summary, committee notes, amendment history, and cross-references to related rules. Use the search box to find rules by keyword or number.