Gideon v. Wainwright

Gideon v. Wainwright
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 15, 1963 Decided March 18, 1963
Full case name	Clarence E. Gideon v. Louie L. Wainwright, Corrections Director.
Citations	372 U.S. 335 (more) 83 S. Ct. 792; 9 L. Ed. 2d 799; 5951 U.S. LEXIS 1942; 23 Ohio Op. 2d 258; 93 A.L.R.2d 733
Argument	Oral argument
Case history
Prior	Defendant convicted, Bay County, Florida Circuit Court (1961); habeas petition denied w/o opinion, sub. nom. Gideon v. Cochrane, 135 So. 2d 746 (Fla. 1961); cert. granted, 370 U.S. 908 (1962).
Subsequent	On remand, 153 So. 2d 299 (Fla. 1963); defendant acquitted, Bay County, Florida Circuit Court (1963)
Holding
The Sixth Amendment right to counsel is a fundamental right applied to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution's Due Process Clause, and requires that indigent criminal defendants be provided counsel at trial. Supreme Court of Florida reversed.
Court membership
Chief Justice Earl Warren Associate Justices Hugo Black · William O. Douglas Tom C. Clark · John M. Harlan II William J. Brennan Jr. · Potter Stewart Byron White · Arthur Goldberg
Case opinions
Majority	Black, joined by Warren, Douglas, Brennan, Stewart, White, Goldberg
Concurrence	Douglas
Concurrence	Clark (in result)
Concurrence	Harlan
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amends. VI, XIV
This case overturned a previous ruling or rulings
Betts v. Brady (1942)

Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), was 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]