Pickler v. Smith

Frankum, Justice.

In 1964 the appellant was indicated, tried and convicted on three counts of robbery by open force and violence, and sentenced to life imprisonment on each count. On June 23, 1969, he filed a petition for habeas corpus in the Superior Court of Tattnall County alleging that his detention was illegal on the grounds that the grand jury which indicted him and the trial jury which convicted him were illegally constituted in that all of said grand jurors were selected from segregated lists; that the jurors were selected by race and property ownership rather than from a cross-section…