Robert Bumpus v. Frank Gunter

LEVIN H. CAMPBELL, Circuit Judge.

Robert Bumpus appeals from the dismissal by the district court of his petition for habeas corpus. Bumpus attacks his conviction in the Massachusetts Superior Court on various grounds, the most serious of which, in our view, concerns alleged constitutional inadequacies in the trial court’s instructions to the jury on reasonable doubt. The district court analyzed carefully the disputed portions of the jury charge and held that the charge did, in fact, suffer from deficiencies of a constitutional magnitude. After a subsequent hearing, however,' the court…