Ernest M. Vess v. C. C. Peyton, Superintendent of the Virginia State Penitentiary

Upon his plea of guilty, Ernest M. Vess was convicted on May 21, 1962 in the Circuit Court of Roanoke County, Virginia, of the first-degree murder of his wife, December 1,1961, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Exhausting his remedies in the State courts without success, he petitioned the District Court for release through habeas corpus.

The grounds of his petition are that his conviction is a nullity because he did not have the assistance of counsel at a critical stage of the proceedings, i. e. the preliminary hearing, and did not have adequate representation of counsel in the State court…