John Calvin Johnson v. Walter M. Riddle

WIDENER, Circuit Judge:

In this federal habeas corpus proceeding, petitioner John Calvin Johnson challenges the validity of a 1957 armed robbery conviction upon which a current three-year recidivist sentence is partially based. 1 The district court denied relief, and we affirm.

Johnson directs four assignments of error at his 1957 conviction: (1) The systematic exclusion of black people from the grand jury that indicted him; (2) denial of his right of appeal; (3) ineffective assistance of counsel at the appellate stage of the proceedings; and (4) the use of an impermissibly suggestive…