As many of our California readers already know, you are afforded a number of rights under the U.S. Constitution. One of these rights is the right to court-appointed counsel which is afforded to you by the Sixth Amendment in federal prosecutions and extended to state trials under the Fourteenth Amendment.
It’s a right we now take for granted here in the United States and one few people can imagine absent from criminal law. But did you know that prior to 1963, the right to a public defender wasn’t applied in to every criminal trial? It wasn’t until the U.S. Supreme Court decided on Gideon v. Wainwright that things changed.
How Did Gideon v. Wainwright Impact the Criminal Justice System?
Well, the case asked the Supreme Court an important question: was the Sixth Amendment right to court-appointed legal counsel in federal prosecutions made obligatory upon state courts by the Fourteenth Amendment? In other words, did the state courts have to follow the same “right to counsel” rule that the federal courts had to abide by? Here’s how the Supreme Court answered this question:
The Supreme Court first had to look back at another case it had already decided on that raised the exact same question. In Betts v. Brady, the high court denied relief to the defendant, ruling that the refusal to appoint him counsel was not a violation of his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process.
The Court agreed that if it applied Betts v. Brady to Gideon v. Wainwright, it would have to rule similarly because the cases were “nearly indistinguishable.” Instead, the court reconsidered the nature of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments and concluded that by denying court-appointed counsel, the state courts were effectively denying a defendant the right to a fair trial.
Significance of Gideon v. Wainwright
This decision, which was made on March 18, 1963, had a huge impact on the criminal justice system because it required state courts to follow the same “right to counsel” rule federal courts had to follow. From that point on, a person with no legal background was no longer forced to defend themselves against crimes the state courts deem unworthy of court-appointed counsel, potentially putting their freedom in jeopardy for not understanding the law.