William R. Johnson v. S. Lamont Smith, Warden, Georgia State Prison

William R. Johnson, a Georgia state prisoner, petitioned the district court for a writ of habeas corpus on the ground that he unknowingly entered pleas of guilty to three counts of burglary and one count of auto larceny before the Superior Court of Henry County, Georgia, on August 3, 1962, and that despite his request for counsel none was appointed to represent him. The district court, without an evidentiary hearing, found that Johnson had deliberately by-passed his state post-conviction remedies by inexcusably failing to perfect an appeal to the Supreme Court of Georgia from the dismissal of…