Gideon v. Wainwright
Issues: Right to Counsel, Due Process
Background:
- On June 3, 1961, someone broke into the Bay Harbor Pool Room in Panama City, Florida. Some beer and wine were stolen. The cigarette machine and jukebox were smashed and money was missing. A witness said he saw Clarence Earl Gideon in the poolroom early that morning. The police found Gideon and arrested him. He had a lot of change in his pockets and was carrying a bottle of wine. They charged him with breaking and entering.
- Gideon was poor. He could not afford a lawyer. At the trial, he asked the judge to appoint a lawyer for him. The judge said no. Gideon argued that the Sixth Amendment says he is entitled to a lawyer. The judge told Gideon that the state doesn't have to pay for a poor person's legal defense. This meant that Gideon had to defend himself. He tried hard but didn't do a very good job. For example, he called some witnesses who helped the other side more than they helped him.
- Gideon was found guilty and was sentenced to five years in jail. He thought that this was unfair because he had not been given a lawyer. He asked the Supreme Court of Florida to release him but the court said no. Gideon kept trying. He wrote a petition and sent it to the Supreme Court of the United States. When it read what Gideon had written, the Court agreed to hear his case.
- In an earlier case, Betts v. Brady, the Court had ruled that in state criminal trials, the state must supply a poor defendant with a lawyer only if there are "special circumstances". These special circumstances could be that the case is very complicated or that the person is illiterate or not competent to represent himself. Gideon did not claim any of these special circumstances. The Court needed to decide if it should get rid of this "special circumstances" rule. If it did so, then poor people like Gideon would be given a lawyer if charged with a felony in a state court.
- The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gideon in a unanimous decision. Justice Black wrote the opinion for the Court, which ruled that the right to the assistance of counsel in felony criminal cases is a fundamental right, and thus must be required in state courts as well as federal courts. Justices Harlan and Clark wrote concurring opinions.
- The Court rejected part of their prior decision in Betts v. Brady (1942). In that case, the justices had ruled that indigent defendants need only be provided with a lawyer under special circumstances. The decision accepted the portion of the Court’s ruling in Betts which stated that the parts of the Bill of Rights that are “fundamental and essential to a fair trial” are made binding on the states by the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. They specifically noted, however, that “the Court in Betts was wrong … in concluding that the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of counsel was not one of these fundamental rights.”
- The Court said that the best proof that the right to counsel was fundamental and essential was that “[g]overnments … spend vast sums of money to … try defendants accused of crime … Similarly, there are few defendants charged with crime[s]… who fail to hire the best lawyers they can get to prepare and present their defenses.” This indicated that both the government and defendants considered the aid of a lawyer in criminal cases absolutely necessary. In addition, the opinion noted that the Constitution places great emphasis on procedural safeguards designed to guarantee that defendants get fair trials. According to the opinion, “this noble idea cannot be realized if the poor man charged with a crime has to face his accusers without a lawyer to assist him.” The Court concluded that the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a right to counsel was fundamental and essential to a fair trial in both state and federal criminal justice systems. In all felony criminal cases, states must provide lawyers for indigent defendants.
- In his concurring opinion in Gideon, Justice Clark agreed that Betts v. Brady should be overturned, and that the Sixth Amendment must be interpreted to require states to provide counsel for criminal defendants. Under Betts, states were only required to provide lawyers for criminal defendants under special circumstances, which included capital cases. Justice Clark noted that the Constitution does not make any distinction between capital and noncapital cases, but requires procedural protections for defendants meeting the standard of due process of law in both situations. The procedural protections required therefore should not be different depending on whether the defendant was charged with a capital crime or a noncapital crime, according to Justice Clark.
- In his concurring opinion, Justice Harlan also agreed that the right to counsel in criminal cases is a fundamental and essential right. He explained that Betts v. Brady mandated that there must be special circumstances present, such as complex charges, incompetence or illiteracy of defendants, or the possibility of the death penalty as a sentence, to require states to provide criminal defendants with counsel. He then argued that “the mere existence of a serious criminal charge constituted in itself special circumstances.” Since, according to Justice Harlan, all felony criminal trials involved special circumstances, states should be required to provide lawyers for indigent defendants.
Case # & Citation:
- Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963)
- Landmark Cases of the U.S. Supreme Court. (n.d.). Retrieved April 4, 2015, from http://www.streetlaw.org/en/landmark/cases/gideon_v_wainwright