John Frank Ledbetter, Jr. v. Warden, Maryland Penitentiary

SOBELOFF, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal by the State of Maryland from the decision of the District Court, granting appellee John Ledbetter’s, petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Ledbetter was sentenced to life imprisonment upon his 1960 conviction in the Baltimore City Criminal Court for first degree murder. After Ledbetter has exhausted state remedies, the District Court conducted a plenary hearing on his claims, and held that oral and written statements, taken from him by the police and used at his trial, had been obtained in violation of the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth…