Walter F. Keys v. Walter Dunbar

Appellant appeals from an order entered January 26, 1967, denying his motion to vacate and set aside a prior District Court order, which in turn had denied his petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

On October 30, 1963, while Keys was in state custody, he filed his original petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the federal District Court, asserting that constitutional errors invalidated his conviction upon charges of abortion. ( 28 U.S.C. § 2241 .) His petition was denied without an evidentiary hearing by an order entered April 17, 1964. He filed a notice of appeal from that order on June 11, 1964. The District Court refused to issue a certificate of probable cause. ( 28 U.S.C. § 2253 .) Keys took no further steps to perfect an appeal from that order.

Beginning in February 1965 Keys filed in the District Court successive motions to vacate and set aside the order of April 17, 1964. Each of the motions was denied. On February 23, 1966, Keys was finally discharged from custody. The last motion in the series was filed on December 20, 1966, in which Keys set forth the various grounds urged in the original habeas petition to support collateral attack on the state judgment, and in…