What was the Supreme Courts decision? (what did they say about the right to counsel)

Photo of Clarence Earl Gideon.
Charged with breaking and entering into a Panama Metropolis, Florida, pool hall, Clarence Earl Gideon Gideon, was denied his request that an attorney be appointed to represent him. The Supreme Court reversed his conviction, holding that defense force counsel is "primal and essential" to a fair trial.

Reproduction courtesy of the Florida Department of Corrections

Gideon v. Wainwright (1963)

In Gideon 5. Wainwright (1963), the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution requires the states to provide defense attorneys to criminal defendants charged with serious offenses who cannot beget lawyers themselves. The case began with the 1961 abort of Clarence Earl Gideon. Gideon was charged with breaking and entering into a Panama City, Florida, pool hall and stealing money from the hall'due south vending machines. At trial, Gideon, who could non afford a lawyer himself, requested that an attorney be appointed to stand for him. He was told by the judge that Florida only provided attorneys to indigent defendants charged with crimes that might result in the capital punishment if they were establish guilty. After he was sentenced to v years in prison, Gideon filed a habeas corpus petition (or petition for release from unjust imprisonment) to the Florida Supreme Courtroom, claiming that his conviction was unconstitutional because he lacked a defense attorney at trial. After the Florida Supreme Court denied his petition, Gideon appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reviewed his example in 1963.

The Supreme Courtroom, in a unanimous decision written by Justice Hugo Black, ruled that Gideon's confidence was unconstitutional considering Gideon was denied a defence lawyer at trial. The Court ruled that the Constitution's Sixth Amendment gives defendants the correct to counsel in criminal trials where the defendant is charged with a serious offense even if they cannot beget one themselves; it states that "in all criminal prosecutions, the defendant shall enjoy the right to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense force." Before the 1930s, the Supreme Court interpreted this linguistic communication as merely forbidding the state from denying a defense force attorney at trial. From the 1930s on, nevertheless, the Court interpreted the amendment every bit requiring the country to provide defense force attorneys in capital trials (see Powell five. Alabama [1932]).

In Gideon, the Courtroom took this jurisprudence farther, ruling that the 6th Amendment requires states to provide defense attorneys to any indigent criminal defendant charged with a felony (more often than not a crime punishable by imprisonment of more than one year). Commencement, the Courtroom noted that the states, just like the federal government, are bound to the 6th Subpoena considering the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Procedure Clause applies the key provisions of the Pecker of Rights against the states. Second, the Courtroom argued that the 6th Amendment requires a land to provide defense force lawyers if necessary because such lawyers are essential to a "fair trial." Observed Justice Blackness, "That regime hires lawyers to prosecute and defendants who take the coin hire lawyers to defend are the strongest indications of the widespread belief that lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, non luxuries." The Court noted that America's criminal justice arrangement is "adversarial," pregnant that the state assumes and uses its resource to establish the defendant's guilt before the defendant is proven guilty in a courtroom of law. Because, in this adversarial system, "fifty-fifty the intelligent and educated layman has small-scale and sometimes no skill in the science of law," the Courtroom easily concluded that the presence of defence counsel is "fundamental and essential to fair trials" in the United States. Gideon was appointed counsel, eventually retried, and acquitted on all charges. In 1972, in Argersinger v. Hamlin, the Supreme Court farther extended the right to legal counsel to include any defendant charged with a crime punishable past imprisonment.

Gideon 5. Wainwright was part of the Supreme Court's innovative approach to criminal justice in the 1950s and 1960s. The Warren Court extended an unprecedented array of rights to criminal defendants, including the correct to counsel in interrogations, the right to remain silent during arrest and questioning, and the right to be informed of these rights (run into Miranda five. Arizona [1966]). The Court's affidavit of the constitutional rights of criminal defendants too included less famous cases. For case, in Griffin 5. Illinois (1956), the Courtroom ruled that states must provide trial transcripts to criminal defendants seeking appeal. In all of these cases, the Supreme Court recognized that, in a society of profoundly unequal resource, adversarial criminal justice, and ignorance of complex police, justice can only prevail if the state provides an indigent accused with an attorney.


	AUTHOR'S BIO

	Alex McBride is a tertiary year law student at Tulane Constabulary Schoolhouse in New Orleans. He is articles editor on the TULANE LAW REVIEW and the 2005 recipient of the Ray Forrester Award in Ramble Police. In 2007, Alex will be clerking with Judge Susan Braden on the United States Court of Federal Claims in Washington.