Fouquette

Fouquette, sentenced to be executed next Monday, March 3, 1952, by the Eighth District Court of the State of Nevada sitting in Clark County, seeks my order staying his execution for the murder of one Donald Brown pending his appeal in this court from the order of the United States District Court of Nevada denying him relief on his app’ication for a writ of habeas corpus to the warden of the penitentiary where he is confined.

Although the district court denied Fouquette’s motion for a stay of his execution, it gave its certificate of probable cause for the appeal which was immediately taken and permitted him to appeal forma pauperis. Obviously, if there is probable cause for the appeal it would be a mockery of federal justice to execute Fouquette pending its consideration.

The basic contention here is that Fou-quette who twice confessed to the murder of Brown and another person in the State of California, while he was released as an out patient of an asylum for the insane'in the State of California, had his defense of insanity tried in a county where the passion and prejudice against him was so generally aroused that a dispassionate jury could not be impaneled.

The dangerous…