Gideon v. Wainwright

“ These difficulties led the Attorneys General of 22 States to urge that this Court overrule Betts v. Brady and apply fully the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of right to counsel to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. See Gideon v. Wainwright, supra, 372 U.S., at 336, 83 S.Ct., at 792. And to deny to the States the power to impair a fundamental constitutional right is not to increase federal power, but, rather, to limit the power of both federal and state governments in favor of safeguarding the fundamental rights and liberties of the individual. ”

“ This conflict must be resolved, unless the Constitution of the United States is going to mean one thing in Arkansas and something else in Mississippi.
In Gideon v. Wainwright, supra, we said that '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. This seems to us to be an obvious truth.' No State should be permitted to repudiate those words by arbitrarily attaching the label 'misdemeanor' to a criminal offense. ”

“ Appearing in court without funds and without a lawyer, petitioner asked the court to appoint counsel for him, whereupon the following colloquy took place:
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. ”

“ In agreeing with the Court that the right to counsel in a case such as this should now be expressly recognized as a fundamental right embraced in the Fourteenth Amendment, I wish to make a further observation. When we hold a right or immunity, valid against the Federal Government, to be "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" [6] and thus valid against the States, I do not read our past decisions to suggest that, by so holding, we automatically carry over an entire body of federal law and apply it in full sweep to the States. ”

“ People of State of New York, 346 U.S. 156, 195-196, 73 S.Ct. 1077, 1098 1099, 97 L.Ed. 1522. But of course since Gideon v. Wainwright, supra, it no longer can broadly be said that the Sixth Amendment does not apply to state courts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Plainly, had the Court concluded that appointment of counsel for an indigent criminal defendant was "a fundamental right, essential to a fair trial," it would have held that the Fourteenth Amendment requires appointment of counsel in a state court, just as the Sixth Amendment requires in a federal court. [p341]
We think the Court in Betts had ample precedent for acknowledging that those guarantees of the Bill of Rights which are fundamental safeguards of liberty immune from federal abridgment are equally protected against state invasion by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. ”

“ The motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and the petition for writ of certiorari are granted. The judgment is reversed. Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799; Draper v. ”

“ He lacks both the skill and knowledge adequately to prepare his defense, even though he have a perfect one. He requires the guiding hand of counsel at every step in the proceedings against him. Without it, though he be not guilty, he faces the danger of conviction because he does not know how to establish his innocence. 287 U.S. at 68-69. The Court in Betts v. Brady departed from the sound wisdom upon which the Court's holding in Powell v. Alabama rested. Florida, supported by two other States, has asked that Betts v. Brady be left intact. ”

“ That view was also expressed by Justices Bradley and Swayne in the Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 118-119, 122, and seemingly was accepted by Justice Clifford when he dissented with Justice Field in Walker v. Sauvinet, 92 U.S. 90, 90, 92. [1] Unfortunately, it has never commanded a Court. Yet, happily, all constitutional questions are always open. ”

“ Even by the time of the Betts decision, dictum in at least one of the Court's opinions had indicated that there was an absolute right to the services of counsel in the trial of state capital cases. [1] Such dicta continued to appear in subsequent decisions, [2] and any lingering doubts were finally eliminated by the holding of Hamilton v. Alabama, 368 U.S. 52.
In noncapital cases, the "special circumstances" rule has continued to exist in form while its substance has been substantially and steadily eroded. ”

“ The court reversed the conviction for resisting an officer on the ground that the resistance must occur while the officer is making an arrest to constitute a crime under the ordinance. However, the court found the arrest was lawful, and since ' [t] he defendant was in police custody pursuant to a legal arrest * * * the officers had the right and the obligation to search the defendant * * *.' It held that 'an individual in lawful police custody' cannot resist the actions of the police in doing their duty, and therefore affirmed the convictions for assault. ”

“ For centuries, no jurisdiction has countenanced the execution of the insane, yet this Court has never decided whether the Constitution forbids the practice. Today we keep faith with our common law heritage in holding that it does. ”

“ In answering that question, we bear in mind that, while the underlying social values encompassed by the Eighth Amendment are rooted in historical traditions, the manner in which our judicial system protects those values is purely a matter of contemporary law. Once a substantive right or restriction is recognized in the Constitution, therefore, its enforcement is in no way confined to the rudimentary process deemed adequate in ages past. ”

“ Since no State sanctions execution of the insane, the real battle being fought in this case is over what procedures must accompany the inquiry into sanity. The Court reaches the result it does by examining the common law, creating a constitutional right that no State seeks to violate, and then concluding that the common law procedures are inadequate to protect the newly created but common-law-based right. I find it unnecessary to "constitutionalize" the already uniform view that the insane should not be executed, and inappropriate to "selectively incorporate" the common law practice. ”

“ State of Ohio, a citizen had the right to offer some resistance to an unconstitutional 'seizure' or 'search.' Must he now stand quietly and supinely while officers 'pat him down,' whirl him around, and throw him in the wagon?
The present episode may be an insignificant one and the hurt to petitioner nominal. But the principle that a citizen can defy an unconstitutional act is deep in our system. ”

“ In Wainwright, we left open the question whether the deliberate bypass standard still applied to a situation like that in Fay, where a petitioner has surrendered entirely his right to appeal his state conviction. Wainwright, 433 U.S., at 88, n. 12, 97 S.Ct., at 2507, n. 12. We rejected explicitly, however, "the sweeping language of Fay v. Noia, going far beyond the facts of the case eliciting it." Id., at 87-88, 97 S.Ct., at 2507.
Our cases since Sykes have been unanimous in applying the cause and prejudice standard. Engle v. ”

“ Nevertheless, in declaring that it is "impossible to create a meaningful distinction between confessions elicited in violation of the Sixth Amendment and those in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment," post, at 312 (opinion of Rehnquist, C.J.) , the majority overlooks the obvious. Neither Milton v. Wainwright nor any of the other cases upon which the majority relies involved a defendant's coerced confession, nor were there present in these cases the distinctive reasons underlying the exclusion of coerced incriminating statements of the defendant. ”

“ Wainwright, supra, has been described by Justice Schaefer of the Illinois Supreme Court as 'by far the most pervasive * * * (o) f all of the rights that an accused person has.' [7] Yet Justice Brandeis even more boldly characterized the immunity from unjustifiable intrusions upon privacy, which was denied retroactive enforcement in Linkletter as 'the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.' [8] To reiterate what was said in Linkletter, we do not disparage a constitutional guarantee in any manner by declining to apply it retroactively. ”

“ We do not sit as a court of criminal appeals to review state cases. The States are free to provide such procedures as they choose, including rules of evidence, provided that none of them infringes a guarantee in the Federal Constitution. The recent right-to-counsel cases, starting with Gideon v. ”

“ The second principle which the state courts might regard as dispositive in this case was announced by the Louisiana Supreme Court in City of Monroe v. Ducas, 203 La. 971, 14 So.2d 781 (1943) :
'The right of personal liberty is one of the fundamental rights guaranteed to every citizen, and any unlawful interference with it may be resisted. Every person has a right to resist an unlawful arrest ”

“ It is true that the right to the assistance of counsel has been applied retroactively at stages of the prosecution where denial of the right must almost invariably deny a fair trial, for example, at the trial itself, Gideon v. ”

“ Other provisions of the statute [3] entitled 'Presumptions,' declare that presence at the site of such a distillery 'shall be deemed sufficient evidence to authorize conviction, unless the defendant explains such presence to the satisfaction of the jury * * *.' At the trial federal and state officers testified, among other things, that they had seen Gainey at a still site. Gainey did not testify. The trial court, quite appropriately if the foregoing provisions are valid, instructed the jury that Gainey's unexplained presence at the still was 'deemed in law sufficient' to convict. ”

“ Under our authorities (cf. John Bad Elk v. United States, 177 U.S. 529, 534-535, 20 S.Ct. 729, 44 L.Ed.2d 874; and see United States v. Di Re, 332 U.S. 581, 594, 68 S.Ct. 222, 92 L.Ed. 210) , at least prior to the ill-starred case of Terry v. ”

“ It is true that a habeas court's concern to honor state procedural default rules rests in part on respect for the integrity of procedures "employed by a coordinate jurisdiction within the federal system," Wainwright v. ”

“ I therefore join the Court's judgment.
1. Petitioner offers a good example. Petitioner was convicted of first-degree murder in 1974. On direct appeal, his conviction and sentence were affirmed, Ford v. State, 374 So.2d 496 (Fla.1979) , and this Court denied certiorari. 445 U.S. 972 (1980) . Petitioner then joined 122 other death row inmates in seeking extraordinary relief from the Florida Supreme Court, based on that court's allegedly improper procedure for review of capital cases. ”

“ Four of the five appeals were decided by this court substantially in favor of Mrs. Gaines. The fifth was adverse, not in anywise excluding the re-examination of the only point then ruled by the use of the same testimony, and that which is new. Considered in connection, both have impressed us with a different impression of the status of Mrs. Gaines's legitimacy from that which this court did not then think was sufficiently proved, as we now think it has been. Now she is here with a support which her cases have not had before. ”

“ The Bailey case also emphatically answers the Court's insistence that this encroachment on Gainey's constitutional rights was justified or neutralized by the trial court's instruction that while evidence of unexplained presence was sufficient under the statute to convict, the jury nonetheless was not compelled to convict. ”

“ McNeal, 154 U.S. 34, 14 S.Ct. 1108, 38 L.Ed. 896; it would be quite another to use the presumption of death from seven years' absence to convict a man of murder. I do not think it can be denied that use of the statutory presumptions in the case before us at the very least seriously impaired Gainey's constitutional right to have a jury weigh the facts of his case without any congressional interference through predetermination of what evidence would be sufficient to prove the facts necessary to convict in a particular case. ”

“ The most important and most crucial action the courts take in trying people for crime is to resolve facts. This is a judicial, not a legislative, function. I think that in passing these two sections Congress stepped over its constitutionally limited bounds and encroached on the constitutional power of courts to try cases. I would therefore affirm the judgment of the court below and grant Gainey a new trial by judge and jury with all the protections accorded by the law of the land. ”

“ It is an averment of the defendant in his answer to the complainant's bill, but not in response to any allegation in it. It changes the attitude of the litigants from what it was in the case of Gaines v. Relf and Chew, in 12 Howard. Then Mrs. Gaines had the burden of proof to establish affirmatively the fact, that she was the forced heir of her father, and the donee of her mother, his widow. This court at that time did not think that had been satisfactorily done, and dismissed her suit, without affirming for or against the factum of marriage between her father and mother. ”

“ Yet here the Court sanctions a method less crude, but just as effective, to deny Gainey his constitutional right to a trial by jury. [11]
I cannot subscribe to the idea that any one of the constitutional grants of power to Congress enumerated in Art. I, § 8, including the Necessary and Proper Clause, contains either an express or an implied power of Congress to instruct juries as to what evidence is sufficient to convict defendants in particular cases. [12] Congress can undoubtedly create crimes, but it cannot constitutionally try them. ”