Terrell Walker v. Frederick Butterworth

PETTINE, District Judge.

This appeal of a dismissal of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. § 2254, requires the Court to inspect the constitutional validity of evidentiary and procedural rules traditionally practiced at criminal trials in Massachusetts.

At the state court trial, the defendant, Terrell Walker, was convicted of armed robbery and first degree murder; he was found to have successfully organized, with two others, the robbery of the Suffolk Loan Company, during the course of which he shot and killed a policeman stationed therein. The government’s evidence pictured…