Michael H. Grove v. Lawrence E. Wilson, Warden, Etc.

This is an appeal from an order of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Southern Division, denying the appellant’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Jurisdiction of the District Court rests upon Section 2241(a), (c) (3), Title 28, U.S.C., which provides that a writ of habeas corpus may be granted to a petitioner who is held “in custody in violation of the Constitution * * * of the United States.” To invoke the jurisdiction of the District Court, a petitioner held in custody pursuant to the judgment of a state court must show that he has exhausted the remedies available to him by the courts of that state. (Section 2254, Title 28, U.S.C.)

The appellant herein, whom we will refer to as the petitioner, pleaded guilty in the Superior Court of San Diego County, California, to a charge of murder, which upon proof, the Court fixed as murder in the first degree. He was sentenced to imprisonment for life and is now confined at the California State Prison, San Quentin, California. Petitions for habeas corpus in the Superior Court of Marin County and in the Supreme Court of California were denied without opinions. The petitioner has thus exhausted the…