Thomas R. Knott, Jr. v. Francis G. Howard, Warden

Appellant, convicted of murder in the Rhode Island Superior Court, see State v. Knott, 111 R.I. 241, 302 A.2d 64 (1973), appeals from the denial of his petition for habeas corpus. His primary claim is that the two confessions at issue here should have been excluded from evidence because he received no warnings about his rights prior to making the inculpatory statements. Acceptance of this argument would amount to applying Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), to his retrial. But Miranda does not apply to a retrial where the original trial commenced prior to…