Roy Clark v. Ross Maggio, Jr., Warden, Louisiana State Penitentiary, and William J. Guste, Jr., Attorney General of the State of Louisiana

ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge:

A defendant convicted by a Louisiana state court of first degree murder in the course of an armed robbery and sentenced to life imprisonment seeks habeas corpus. We affirm the district court’s conclusion that the state judge’s charge did not abridge the constitutional rights of the accused. We find no prejudice to the defendant as a result of the state’s failure to prove that the accused had the specific intent to kill the victim, a necessary element of first degree murder if the death penalty is imposed but not an element of felony homicide. We therefore deny…