Walter Stewart v. Howard Peters, III

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

In 1980, Walter Stewart pleaded guilty in an Illinois state court to two murders committed earlier that year in the course of his robbery of a suburban jewelry store, and was sentenced to death. After exhausting his state remedies, People v. Stewart, 101 Ill.2d 470, 79 Ill.Dec. 123, 463 N.E.2d 677 (1984); 123 Ill.2d 368, 123 Ill.Dec. 927, 528 N.E.2d 631 (1988), Stewart sought federal habeas corpus. The district judge, concluding from his study of the record in the state court that “Stewart’s guilty plea violated his [Fourteenth Amendment] due process rights because the…