Gideon v. Wainwright

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Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires U.S. states to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who are unable to afford their own. The case extended the right to counsel , which had been found under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to impose requirements on the federal government, by imposing those requirements upon the states as well.

The Court reasoned that the assistance of counsel is "one of the safeguards of the Sixth Amendment deemed necessary to insure fundamental human rights of life and liberty", and that the Sixth Amendment serves as a warning that "if the constitutional safeguards it provides be lost, justice will not still be done."[1]

Contents

• 1 Background

• 2 Court decision

• 3 Implications

  • 3.1 Impact on courts

    • 3.1.1 Public defender system

  • 3.2 Cause of the civil right to counsel movement

    • 3.2.1 Civil right to counsel: influence on policy and aid provision

  • 3.3 Waiving the right to counsel

• 4 Criticism

• 5 See also

• 6 References

• 7 Further reading

• 8 External links

Background

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Between midnight and 8:00 a.m. on June 3, 1961, a burglary occurred at the Bay Harbor Pool Room in Panama City , Florida . An unknown person broke a door, smashed a cigarette machine and a record player, and stole money from a cash register. Later that day, a witness reported that he had seen Clarence Earl Gideon in the poolroom at around 5:30 that morning, leaving with a wine bottle, a Coca-Cola , and some change in his pockets. Based on this accusation alone, the police arrested Gideon and charged him with breaking and entering with intent to commit petty larceny .

Gideon appeared in court alone, as he was too poor to afford to hire a defense lawyer. The following conversation took place between Gideon and the judge:[2]

The COURT: Mr. Gideon, I am sorry, but I cannot appoint counsel to represent you in this case. Under the laws of the State of Florida, the only time the court can appoint counsel to represent a defendant is when that person is charged with a capital offense. I am sorry, but I will have to deny your request to appoint counsel to defend you in this case.

GIDEON: The United States Supreme Court says I am entitled to be represented by counsel.

The trial court declined to appoint counsel for Gideon. As a result, he was forced to act as his own counsel and conduct his own defense in court, emphasizing his innocence in the case. At the conclusion of the trial, the jury returned a guilty verdict. The court sentenced Gideon to serve five years in the state prison.

Gideon first filed a petition for a writ of _habeas corpus _ in the Supreme Court of Florida . In his petition, he claimed his Sixth Amendment right had been violated because the judge refused to appoint counsel. The Florida Supreme Court denied Gideon's petition.[3] Later, from his cell at the Florida State Prison in Raiford , making use of the prison library and writing in pencil on prison stationery,[4] Gideon appealed to the United States Supreme Court in a suit against the Secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections , H. G. Cochran. Cochran retired and was replaced by Louie L. Wainwright before the Supreme Court heard the case. Gideon argued in his appeal that he had been denied counsel and therefore that his Sixth Amendment rights, as applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment , had been violated.

The Supreme Court assigned Gideon a prominent Washington, D.C. attorney, future Supreme Court justice Abe Fortas of the law firm Arnold, Fortas & Porter . Fortas was assisted by longtime Arnold, Fortas & Porter partner Abe Krash and future famed legal scholar John Hart Ely , then a third-year student at Yale Law School .[5] Bruce Jacob , who later became Dean of the Mercer University School of Law and Dean of Stetson University College of Law , argued the case for Florida.[6]

During oral arguments before the Supreme Court, Fortas repeatedly asserted that the existing framework for a state trial court to appoint counsel was unworkable.[7] Under the existing framework, a magistrate in a preliminary hearing determined whether there were "special circumstances" in the case meriting that the defendant receive counsel. But as Fortas highlighted, that determination occurred too early in the case to be of any use. For example, whether a witness's statement should be barred because it was hearsay is an extremely complicated issue that no layman could readily confront, and such a situation arises only during a trial.

As a second point, Fortas presented during oral argument that it was widely accepted in the legal community that the first thing any reputable lawyer does when accused of a crime is hire an attorney. As an example, Fortas noted that when Clarence Darrow , who was widely known as the greatest criminal attorney in the United States, was charged with jury tampering and suborning perjury, the first thing he did was get an attorney to represent him.[7] Since Gideon had only an eighth-grade education, Fortas suggested that if a lawyer as prominent as Darrow needed an attorney to represent him in criminal proceedings, then a man without a legal education, or any education for that matter, needed a lawyer too.[7] Fortas's former Yale Law School professor, longtime friend and future Supreme Court colleague Justice William O. Douglas praised his argument as "probably the best single legal argument" in his 36 years on the court.[8]

Court decision

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The first page of Gideon's handwritten petition for a writ of certiorari to the US Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court's decision was announced on March 18, 1963, and delivered by Justice Hugo Black . The decision was announced as being unanimous (9–0) in favor of Gideon.[9] Two concurring opinions were written by Justices Clark and Harlan . Justice Douglas wrote a separate opinion. The Supreme Court decision specifically cited its previous ruling in _Powell v. Alabama _ (1932). Whether the decision in Powell v. Alabama applied to non-capital cases had sparked heated debate. _Betts v. Brady _ (1942) had earlier held that, unless

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