Gideon v Wainwright The Supreme Court Opinion in the United States
Gideon v Wainwright The Supreme Court Opinion
Introduction to Gideon v Wainwright The Supreme Court Opinion
The decision in Gideon was based on the Court’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The 14th Amendment provides that the states cannot deprive any person of liberty without due process of law-that is, without ensuring certain standards of fundamental fairness. Under this due process requirement, the states are required to guarantee criminal defendants many of the rights contained in the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution). One such right, contained in the Sixth Amendment, is the right to assistance of legal counsel. The Sixth Amendment applies explicitly only to defendants who are charged with crimes under federal law, such as treason. However, if assistance of counsel is considered fundamental to due process, then the 14th Amendment would require the states to guarantee the right.
In the Betts decision, the Court determined that the refusal to appoint counsel under the particular circumstances of that case did not infringe on a “fundamental right, essential to a fair trial” and therefore did not amount to a denial of due process. In 1944 Justice Black had dissented (disagreed with the holding) in Betts. Black, a former police court judge from Alabama, was one of the few justices on the Court who had presided over trials in state and local courts. He believed that a criminal trial was fundamentally unfair if a defendant did not have an attorney. In 1963 Justice Black wrote the majority opinion in Gideon, in which the Court overruled Betts. (Although the vote of the Court was unanimous, several justices wrote concurring opinions. A concurring opinion is written when the author agrees with the ruling of the Court but sets forth different reasoning to reach the decision.)
Black stated that the Court in Betts had been wrong when it concluded that the assistance of counsel was not a fundamental right and a necessary part of due process. He also indicated that Betts was a departure from other Court decisions, such as Powell and Johnson. The opinion in Gideon also stressed the importance of legal counsel to make a trial fair. Black noted that the government, understanding that trials require special skills and knowledge, spent a great deal of money hiring lawyers to prosecute criminals. Black urged that the defendant was no less entitled to such representation. According to Black, the noble ideal of a fair trial in which every defendant is equal before the law “cannot be realized if the poor man charged with a crime has to face his accusers without a lawyer to assist him.” (1)