James Trent Bray v. C. C. Peyton, Superintendent, Virginia State Penitentiary

James Trent Bray is presently serving a twenty-year penitentiary sentence passed in a Virginia State court November 18, 1966 on a conviction of statutory rape. After exhausting all available State remedies, including habeas corpus, Bray sought the writ under 28 U.S.C. § 2241 in the Federal Court for the Western District of Virginia. Erroneously, it denied relief.

At the State habeas corpus hearing, May 2, 1968, Bray’s trial counsel testified that the defense stratagem was to expose the 15-year-old child prosecutrix as a consenting lewd female and thus reduce the offense to a misdemeanor. 1 To…