Benjamin A. Dechristoforo v. Robert H. Donnelly

ALDRICH, Senior Circuit Judge.

At four o’clock on the morning on April 18, 1967, the police drew alongside a car that had stopped in a residential area to question the four occupants. The driver, one Gagliardi, was questioned first. He left to enter a house, which he incorrectly asserted to be his own. Petitioner DeChristoforo was questioned next. After he had left the scene, ostensibly to join Gagliardi, the police discovered that the passenger in the front seat was not asleep, as they had been told, but dead. He had been shot in the head by a revolver found on the floor behind him in front…