Venson Eugene Williams v. A. L. Dutton, Warden of the State Prison at Reidsville, Georgia

GEWIN, Circuit Judge:

Sometime in the early morning hours of April 17, 1964, three police officers were brutally shot to death and left lying in a pine thicket in Gwinnett County, Georgia. A year and a half later, appellant Venson Eugene Williams was tried before a jury in the Gwinnett County Superior Court for the murder of one of the officers. He was convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair. After exhausting all his state remedies, 1 Williams filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, alleging that his…