GIDEON V. WAINWRIGHT (1963) DECISION

Justice Hugo Black wrote the opinion for a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court. The Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that in any serious criminal case in a state court, if the defendant cannot afford counsel, the state must provide one. Black explained the reason for this new rule: “Reason and reflection require us to recognize that, in our adversary system of criminal justice, any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him.”

Black continued: “This seems to us to be an obvious truth. Governments, both state and federal, quite properly spend vast sums of money to establish machinery to try defendants accused of crime. Lawyers to prosecute are everywhere deemed essential to protect the public’s interest in an orderly society. Similarly, there are few defendants charged with crime, few indeed, who fail to hire the best lawyers they can get to prepare and present their defenses. That government hires lawyers to prosecute and defendants who have the money hire lawyers to defend are the strongest indications of the widespread belief that lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries. The right of one charged with crime to counsel may not be deemed fundamental and essential to fair trials in some countries, but it is in ours. From the very beginning, our state and national constitutions and laws have laid great emphasis on procedural and substantive safeguards designed to assure fair trials before impartial tribunals in which every defendant stands equal before the law. This noble ideal cannot be realized if the poor man charged with crime has to face his accusers without a lawyer to assist him.”

FOLLOW-UP: Gideon was retried before the same judge in the same courtroom, but this time he had a court-appointed attorney and was acquitted.