Pryor v. Thomas

MOREMEN, Judge.

Appellant, Paul J. Pryor, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. He filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Lyon Circuit Court on the grounds that KRS 435.010, which reads “Any person who commits willful murder shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for life, or by death,” does not prohibit the act by merely fixing the punishment for murder. He contended that such a statute must also define the nature of the crime, and that the indictment and conviction under it contravene Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution…