Willie Albert Smith v. Lee Roy Black, Commissioner, Mississippi Department of Corrections

KING, Circuit Judge:

Willie Albert Smith appeals the district court’s denial of his petition for a writ of habeas corpus from the judgment of conviction and death sentence entered against him on July 30, 1981, in the Circuit Court of the First Judicial Circuit of Hinds County, Mississippi. Smith was convicted of the murder of a convenience store clerk during the course of a robbery and was sentenced to death. Smith’s conviction rests upon the eyewitness testimony of two men who claimed to have seen Smith abducting the clerk and upon circumstantial evidence which the Supreme Court of…