Edward Lee Smith v. Ira M. Coiner, Warden of the West Virginia State Penitentiary

WINTER, Circuit Judge:

After exhausting available state post conviction remedies, Edward Lee Smith sought a federal writ of habeas corpus to set aside his state conviction for the rape of a seventy-two-year-old widow. The district court conducted a plenary hearing but found lacking in merit Smith’s contentions that he had been denied due process of law. Smith argued that due process had been denied because (a) the trial jury had been coerced into finding him guilty, (b) he lacked counsel when the prosecutrix identified him as her attacker, and (c) the state’s evidence in its direct case that…