United States of America Ex Rel. Fred Reed v. Michael Lane and James Greer

*620WILLIAM J. CAMPBELL, Senior District Judge.

The State of Illinois appeals the District Court’s grant of a Writ of Habeas Corpus to Fred Reed, 571 F.Supp. 530. The petitioner had been serving two concurrent prison terms of fifty to one hundred years for two murders with an additional concurrent term of twenty to thirty years for armed robbery. The constitutional violation found by the District Court involved the state trial judge’s failure to give a jury instruction on the compulsion defense. The trial judge declined to give the instruction based upon his interpretation of Illinois statutory…