Tom C. Clark

“ The other points raised by petitioners, such as the misstatement of the Washington county in which Crabtree was convicted and the fact that Oyler actually served in a Pennsylvania correctional home rather than a penitentiary, all involve state questions with which we are not concerned. Since the highest court of West Virginia handed down no opinion, we do not know what questions its judgment foreclosed. If any remain open, our judgment would not affect a test of them in appropriate state proceedings. ”

“ This, petitioners argue, denies equal protection to those persons against whom the heavier penalty is enforced. We note that it is not stated whether the failure to proceed against other three-time offenders was due to lack of knowledge of the prior offenses on the part of the prosecutors or was the result of a deliberate policy of proceeding only in a certain class of cases or against specific persons. The statistics merely show that according to penitentiary records a high percentage of those subject to the law have not been proceeded against. ”

“ In 1960 Crabtree sought habeas corpus relief in the Supreme Court of Appeals claiming denial of due process because of the absence of notice which prevented him from showing he had never been convicted in Walla Walla County, Washington, as had been alleged in the information. ”

“ In 1912 this Court upheld the constitutionality of the statute. Graham v. West Virginia, 224 U.S. 616, 32 S.Ct. 583, 56 L.Ed. 917 (1912) .↑ Any other rule would place a difficult burden on the imposition of a recidivist penalty. Although the fact of prior conviction is within the knowledge of the defendant, often this knowledge does not come home to the prosecutor until after the trial, and in many cases the prior convictions are not discovered until the defendant reaches the penitentiary.↑ West Virginia v. ”