A West Virginia habitual criminal statute provided for a mandatory life sentence upon the third conviction "of a crime punishable by confinement in a penitentiary."

The increased penalty is to be invoked by an information filed by the prosecuting attorney "immediately upon conviction and before sentence."

In such proceedings, in which they were represented by counsel and did not request continuances or raise any matters in defense, but did concede the applicability of the statute to the circumstances of their cases, petitioners were sentenced to life imprisonment.

Subsequently they petitioned the state supreme court (the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia) for writs of habeas corpus, alleging that the Act had been applied without advance notice and to only a minority of those subject to its provisions, in violation of the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Associate Justice Tom C. Clark wrote the opinion of the court, and was joined by Justices Felix Frankfurter, Charles Evans Whittaker, Potter Stewart, and John Marshall Harlan II.