Donnie James Smith v. Ira Kelso, Warden

*1566WISDOM, Senior Circuit Judge:

The primary question this habeas case presents is whether the petitioner’s trial in the state court was fundamentally unfair because the conflict between the petitioner and his co-defendants was so substantial that the trial court should have granted the motion for a severance. On September 20, 1983, Jim Henderson was murdered by two rifle shots to the head as he lay in the back seat of Donnie Smith’s automobile. Henderson’s ex-wife Holly Johnson, her husband Bill Johnson, and Smith, Henderson’s nephew, were jointly tried in a state court in Georgia for murder and…