Noah William Wade v. C. C. Peyton, Superintendent of the Virginia State Penitentiary

We think the writ of habeas corpus was improvidently granted by the District Court, for available state remedies are unexhausted.

In 1952 Wade was convicted of the murder of a fellow prisoner in the Virginia State Penitentiary. He was represented at the trial by a competent, court-assigned lawyer, who, ten years later, died. There was no appeal.

In 1966, fourteen years after the trial and four years after the death of his lawyer, Wade for the first time contended in the District Court that within two weeks after his trial he had twice written his lawyer about an appeal, but had received no…