r might enjoy that to which he was entitled; namely, a
determination of the verity of his allegations. Similarly, in White _v._
Ragen,[943] the Court declared that since a prisoner's petition to a
State court for release on _habeas corpus_ had been dismissed without
requiring the State to answer allegations supporting the petition;
namely, that the conviction was obtained by the use of false testimony
procured by bribery of two witnesses by the prosecutor, must be assumed
to be true. Accordingly, the petitioner's contentions were deemed
sufficient to make out a _prima facie_ case of violation of
constitutional rights and adequate to entitle him to invoke corrective
process in a State court.

Confrontation; Presence of the Accused; Public Trial

On the issue whether the privileges of presence, confrontation and
cross-examination face to face, assured to a defendant in a federal
trial by the Sixth Amendment, are also guaranteed in State criminal
proceedings, the Court thus far has been unable to formulate an enduring
and unequivocal answer. At times it has intimated, as in the following
utterance, that the enjoyment of all these privileges is essential to
due process. "The personal presence of the accused, from the beginning
to the end of a trial for felony, involving life or liberty, as well as
at the time final judgment is rendered against him, may be, and must be
assumed to be, vital to the proper conduct of his defence, and cannot be
dispensed with."[944] Notwithstanding this early assumption, the
Supreme Court, fourteen years later, sustained a Kentucky court which
approved the questioning, in the absence of the accused and his counsel,
of a juror whose discharge before he was sworn had been demanded.[945]
Inasmuch as no injury to substantial rights of the defendant was deemed
to have been inflicted by his occasional absence during a trial, no
denial of due process was declared to have resulted from the acceptance
by the State court of the defendant's waiver of his right to be present.
In harmony with the latter case is Felts _v._ Murphy,[946] which
contains additional evidence of an increasing inclination on the part of
the Court to treat as not fundamental the rights of presence,
confrontation, and cross-examination face to face. The defendant in
Felts _v._ Murphy proved to be so deaf that he was unable to hear any of
the testimony of witnesses, and had never had the evidence repeated to
him. While regretting th