Time has suddenly become the biggest factor in Wendell Smallwood’s latest legal battle. The former Philadelphia Eagles running back has been fighting to change the situation that could keep him away from his family, with his 8-year-old daughter, Mila Rose Smallwood, facing a terminal illness.

Mila was placed in palliative hospice care after cancer treatments failed to stop the disease from progressing. With her condition worsening, Smallwood’s attorney Yaron Helmer filed an emergency motion in New Jersey, seeking to withdraw the guilty plea that had kept a state detainer in place.

“This is an illness that is untreatable,” Gloucester County Superior Court Judge Renard Scott said. “His daughter has days, possibly weeks remaining.”

The emergency request came as Smallwood’s New Jersey firearm case was already under a new legal spotlight. Helmer argued that enforcing the guilty plea under New Jersey’s changing assault-weapons laws created a “manifest injustice.” Judge Scott agreed and granted the motion on August 10, 2026.

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The defense motion relied on 2026 New Jersey appellate decisions that challenged how the state’s assault-weapons and large-capacity magazine laws classified certain firearms and attachments. Smallwood’s attorney argued that the firearm seized from his home fell within those contested classifications, making the continued enforcement of his guilty plea legally unfair.

Judge Scott also rejected the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office’s request to stay the ruling while it pursued an appeal, clearing the way for Smallwood’s immediate physical release from state custody.

Smallwood has not been cleared of the state case entirely. With the guilty plea withdrawn, the case returns to its pre-plea status, while prosecutors can still appeal Judge Scott’s ruling or move forward with the underlying indictment.

The New Jersey case was separate from the federal fraud prosecution that first put Smallwood in legal trouble. He pleaded guilty in December 2024 to wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and tax fraud conspiracy after prosecutors accused him of using fraudulent applications and tax filings to obtain pandemic relief funds.

According to the federal case, Smallwood used fraudulent PPP and EIDL applications and helped create false tax filings. The PPP scheme involved applications for 13 sole proprietors totaling $269,200, while he also received kickbacks of $4,000 to $12,000 per applicant. He was ultimately ordered to pay $645,000 in restitution.

Smallwood pleaded guilty to all three federal counts on December 20, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware. Senior U.S. District Judge Richard G. Andrews later sentenced him to 18 months in federal prison and ordered him to pay $645,000 in restitution, along with three years of supervised release.

The firearm case began much earlier. Federal agents searching Smallwood’s Mullica Hill, New Jersey, home in August 2023 as part of the pandemic fraud investigation found an assault-style firearm and a large-capacity magazine, leading to the separate state prosecution.

Smallwood had pleaded guilty to second-degree unlawful possession of an assault firearm in the separate New Jersey case, which resulted in a state detainer. But after Judge Scott withdrew the plea and denied the prosecutor’s request for a stay, that hold was removed and Smallwood was released under pretrial supervision. The state can still appeal or take the case forward, but for now, Smallwood can be with his daughter as her family faces her terminal prognosis.