Walter Wolfrath v. J. Edwin Lavallee, Superintendent, Clinton Correctional Facility

MOORE, Circuit Judge:

In 1968, Petitioner Walter Wolfrath was convicted in the New York courts for the robbery of the Don-Lee Studios in New York City in 1966. 1 Aside from a positive in-court identification by the owners of Don-Lee, one of whom had had the opportunity to observe the robber, face-to-face, for about six to eight minutes, Wolfrath’s two confessions may have contributed to the verdict. The first of those confessions was made to a detective, who at the time was without knowledge of the Don-Lee incident, while Wolfrath was in a hospital recovering from surgery to repair a bullet…