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Constitutional Law-Due Process-Right Of Condemned Prisoner To A Hearing On Claim Of Supervening Insanity, Robert P. Griffin S.Ed.

Michigan Law Review

Petitioner was convicted of murder in a Georgia court and sentenced to die by electrocution. He made application to the governor to postpone execution on the ground that he had become insane after conviction. The governor, acting under authority of a state statute, appointed three physicians who conducted an examination of petitioner and found him sane. Thereupon, petitioner filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in a state court contending that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment entitled him to a hearing on his insanity claim before a judicial or administrative tribunal at which he could …