The principles governing extension of time for criminal appeals require special and substantial reasons, and the longer the delay, the more exceptional the circumstances must be. Where an applicant has previously abandoned an appeal and seeks to rely on entirely new grounds many years after the verdict, the combination of delay, repeated changes of ground, and insufficient merit in the proposed grounds will overwhelmingly tell against granting the extension. The jurisdiction to withdraw a notice of abandonment is confined almost entirely to cases where the applicant's mind did not go with the notice.
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