VAIDEK, J.
Here, the post-conviction court denied Dowell’s petition for post-conviction relief on July 7, 2008. . . . Thus, he had until August 6, 2008, to either file a notice of appeal or a motion to correct error. See Ind. Appellate Rule 25(B); Ind. Trial Rule 6(A). The State contends that Dowell neither filed a notice of appeal nor a motion to correct error within thirty days of this final order and that, instead, thirty-two days after the judgment Dowell filed his motion to correct error.
We must disagree. Dowell’s motion to correct error, filed while he was incarcerated, implicates the “prison mailbox rule.” Under the “prison mailbox rule,” recognized by the United States Supreme Court in Houston v. Lack, pro se filings from an incarcerated litigant are deemed filed when they are delivered to prison officials for mailing. McGill v. Ind. Dep’t of Corr., 636 N.E.2d 199, 202 (Ind. Ct. App. 1994) (citing Houston v. Lack, 487 U.S. 266 (1988)), reh’g denied. Although Houston discusses filings by federal prisoners, it compellingly articulates the reason for deeming a prisoner’s pro se court filings “filed” upon delivery to a prison’s mail system:
Unlike other litigants, pro se prisoners cannot personally travel to the courthouse to see that the notice is stamped “filed” or to establish the date on which the court received the notice. . . . [T]he pro se prisoner has no choice but to entrust the forwarding of his notice of appeal to prison authorities whom he cannot control or supervise and who may have every incentive to delay. No matter how far in advance the pro se prisoner delivers his notice to the prison authorities, he can never be sure that it will ultimately get stamped “filed” on time. And if there is a delay the prisoner suspects is attributable to the prison authorities, he is unlikely to have any means of proving it, for his confinement prevents him from monitoring the process sufficiently to distinguish delay on the part of prison authorities from slow mail service or the court clerk’s failure to stamp the notice on the date received. Unskilled in law, unaided by counsel, and unable to leave the prison, his control over the processing of his notice necessarily ceases as soon as he hands it over to the only public officials to whom he has access-the prison authorities-and the only information he will likely have is the date he delivered the notice to those prison authorities and the date ultimately stamped on his notice.
Houston, 487 U.S. at 271-72. . . . .
. . . [W]e now expressly hold that the prison mailbox rule is applicable to state post-conviction matters. Thus, because Dowell has provided evidence that he delivered his motion to correct error to prison officials within thirty days of the date of the post-conviction court’s final judgment, his motion was timely filed.
NAJAM, J., and FRIEDLANDER, J., concur.