Clyde Snyder v. Ira M. Coiner, Warden, West Virginia State Penitentiary

DONALD RUSSELL, Circuit Judge:

The petitioner, a state prisoner convicted of rape, seeks federal habeas relief, after exhausting state post-conviction remedies. The District Court denied relief and we affirm.

I

The primary claim of error, asserted by the petitioner, concerns the limitation placed by the trial court on the cross-examination of a prosecution witness. The defense sought to establish by cross-examination of the witness that five years earlier, he, then fifteen years of age, at the insistence of his father, had falsely testified at a deposition that he was a passenger, rather than…