Jose Lujan v. United States

Jose Lujan appeals from an order of the district court denying his petition to vacate sentence. Lujan’s difficulty began in 1947 when he was convicted in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas for forging a physician’s prescription for dilaudid tablets in violation of 18 U.S.C.A. § 72, now 18 U.S.C.A. § 494. Lujan here contests the validity of this conviction, which resulted from his plea of guilty, on the ground that he was unrepresented by counsel and did not knowingly waive his right to counsel.

At the time of the 1947 conviction Lu-jan did not avail himself of a…