Carl Miller, Artis P. McClain and Larry Campanella Clark v. State of North Carolina

WINTER, Circuit Judge:

Appellants are three black men who, originally sentenced to death, are currently serving life sentences resulting from their North Carolina convictions, pursuant to N.C.Gen.Stat. § 14-21 (1977 Cum.Supp.), 1 for first degree rape of a white woman. In their petition for federal habeas corpus relief, they alleged two principal constitutional errors in their convictions: first, that the trial court’s insistence that one attorney represent all three defendants deprived them, because of conflicts among them, of the effective assistance of counsel, and second, that the racially…