George Hughes v. James Stafford, Sheriff and Jailer of Whitfield County, Georgia

In November of 1974, George Hughes was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to one year in state prison. After Georgia’s Court of Appeals and its Supreme Court refused to overturn his conviction, Hughes, on April 8, 1976, filed an application for a writ of habeas corpus in the Superior Court of Whitfield County, Georgia. After a hearing, that proceeding apparently lay dormant until 1984 when Hughes moved the state court to act on his habeas corpus application. Promptly thereafter, on December 13, 1984, the state court denied the writ on the merits. On that same date, rather than…