John Everett Horne v. C. C. Peyton, Superintendent of the Virginia State Penitentiary

HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge:

A Virginia prisoner attacks his recidivist conviction asserting fatal deficiency in his representation by his court-appointed lawyer. The lawyer had too many assigned clients, it is said, and his search for defects in the underlying conviction did not extend to an inspection of the formal court records. The District Court found no constitutional infirmity, however, and we find none.

When the Supreme Court held in Chewning v. Cunningham, 368 U.S. 443, 82 S.Ct. 498, 7 L.Ed.2d 442, that a Virginia prisoner had a constitutional right to counsel at a recidivist hearing,…