Raymond Palmer v. C. C. Peyton, Superintendent of the Virginia State Penitentiary

SOBELOFF, Circuit Judge:

Sentences of life imprisonment for rape and forty years for a five dollar robbery, to be served “consecutively,” were imposed on Raymond Palmer in 1958. He had first been tried in 1957, but a mistrial was declared. His second trial, in 1958, ended with a hung jury. At his third trial later in the same year he waived jury trial and was found guilty. 1 He did not appeal. In 1962 Palmer’s petition to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia for a writ of habeas corpus was summarily dismissed. The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari in February, 1963. Palmer v.…