Sandy Lee McNeil v. State of North Carolina and Major William C. Brown

J. SPENCER BELL, Circuit Judge:

The crucial question raised by this appeal is whether the petitioner waived his constitutional right to indictment and to trial by juries from which Negroes had not been systematically excluded. In June of 1959, the petitioner was convicted of second degree burglary in a jury trial in Lenoir County, North Carolina, and sentenced to 33 years in the state penitentiary. The issue of systematic exclusion of Negroes from the grand and petit juries of Lenoir County was not raised before or at his trial. A direct appeal was withdrawn. In 1963, a post-conviction…