Sherman Minton

“ I think it an allowable judgment for the Pennsylvania courts to conclude that petitioner's allegations, made eighteen years after trial, were improbable in the light of the matters of record, that probable cause did not exist for his discharge, and that the necessity of a hearing was not indicated. ”

“ The courts had a right to assume, in the absence of allegations or record to the contrary, that petitioner was a mentally competent young man of twentyone years, and that his contention, made eighteen years late, that he had pleaded guilty to crimes other than he thought he was pleading to was a bit hard to believe, especially in the absence of an allegation that he did not commit the offenses charged in the indictments to which he pleaded guilty. ”

“ He did not allege that he was mentally incompetent at the time he was serving almost nine years in Thorn Hill and Morganza, from 1921 until 1930. If he had shown any such infirmity, surely the officials in charge of these two institutions would have had the fact called to their attention and would have had him sent to a mental institution. ”