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Show Habeas Corpus Writ Granted Convicted Slayer Pair Another postponement, and perhaps a lengthy one. in payment pay-ment for their admitted crime lias been granted Melvin Lelioy Sullivan and Verne Alfred Hraasch, convicted slayers of a Heaver service station attend. int. a cold-blooded murder committed commit-ted in the act of burgalry an I not denied by the defendants. The action came when Federal Judge Willis V. Hitter granted a habeas corpus writ while a review re-view of the ease is being made by a higher court. The two young hoodlums, who shot down Howard How-ard Manziono in cold blood in an early morning robbery more than five years ago, have been sentenced to execution on three different occasions and have been turned down on appeals by state and national supreme courts, but Judge Ritter granted the writ on the grounds that the men did not have proper legal counsel during the early stages of their long court battle. Since the first trial in the District Dis-trict Court, when they were found guilty and sentenced to die in payment for their crime-, there has never been any question ques-tion of guilt or innocence in the crime, but merely legal technicalities techni-calities which have kept the defendants de-fendants from penalty. The two defendants were ordered order-ed to remain in state prison pending review of their case. During the five years since the cowardly crime was committed the two have outlived three execution ex-ecution dates and made 11 appeals ap-peals through the judicial system, sys-tem, all of them turned down except in Judge Ritter's court. Prior to the action this week they had been turned down twice bv the U. S. Supremo Court, five times by the Utah Supreme Court, twice by the State Board of Pardons, Par-dons, and once by the Utah District Dis-trict Court in which they weiej originally tried. I |