Angelo v. Howard

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

SWINFORD, District Judge.

Umberto Angelo, a prisoner in the Kentucky State Reformatory, át La Grange, petitions this court for a writ of habeas corpus. The petitioner, on a plea of guilty to the offense of willful murder, was sentenced to a term of life imprisonment without intervention of a jury. It is alleged that Kentucky’s death penalty procedure places an impermissible burden upon the exercise of the sixth amendment right to a jury trial and effectively coerces guilty pleas. The petitioner contends that an accused charged with a capital offense finds himself in the…