Elmer L. Johnson v. Paul Prast, Harold Smith v. Ramon L. Gray

TONE, Circuit Judge.

These habeas-corpus actions challenge state sentences as having been imposed without consideration of presentence custody resulting from defendants’ financial inability to make bail. In Faye v. Gray, 541 F.2d 665 (7th Cir. 1976), this court held that the equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires a state sentencing judge to consider such presentence custody in sentencing, even though the total time imposed by the sentence and the presentence custody does not exceed the statutory maximum. Left undecided by that case is the question now before us: whether…