In re Graham

The petitioner, Barbara Graham, has applied for writ of habeas corpus simultaneously to this Court and to the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. She is in state custody awaiting sentence of death following her conviction in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County for the murder of one Mabel Monahan. The judgment of conviction was appealed and affirmed by the Supreme Court of California on August 11, 1954. People v. Santo, 1954, 43 Cal.2d 319 , 273 P.2d 249 . A petition for rehearing by the same court was denied on September 8, 1954. The application for writ of habeas corpus is made under the appropriate sections of the Judicial Code. 28 U.S.C. §§ 2241-2243 .

From a reading of the opinion of the Supreme Court of California, it may be assumed that the questions relating to due process under the federal Constitution and here involved were pressed upon the Supreme Court of the United States on the petition for certiorari. Indeed, a reading of the petition warrants the inference that a good deal of the argument now presented was presented to that court. For the petition, after discussing many decisions by the Supreme Court, prefaces a quotation from…