Clifton Ray Jones v. John Taylor and State of North Carolina

WINTER, Circuit Judge;

We are asked to reverse the district court’s denial of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus without full evidentiary hearing on the ground that Clifton Ray Jones was denied the right to effective assistance of counsel in the two trials resulting in his North Carolina convictions of breaking and entering and larceny. In the trials, which apparently occurred on successive days, the principal evidence against Jones was the testimony of Robert Michael Suggs who asserted that he and Jones participated in the break-ins. 1 We think that the record sufficiently discloses that…