Word: gideon
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...underlying principle of fair trial, that it should be a truth-seeking contest between equal adversaries, has also been undermined by the cost of competent legal aid. Until 1963, when the Supreme Court's celebrated Gideon v. Wainwright ruling established the absolute right to counsel in serious criminal proceedings under state jurisdictions, the great majority of defendants had no lawyers because they could not afford them (60% still cannot). A disproportionate number of people wound up in jail or on death row largely because they happened to be poor, undefended and ignorant of their rights. In short, criminal justice...
...Mapp v. Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled in 1961 that state courts must enforce the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against "unreasonable searches and seizures" by excluding illegal evidence, thus forcing state and local police to use judge-approved warrants for the first time in U.S. history. The Gideon decision invoked the Sixth Amendment to establish the right to counsel of all indigents accused of felonies-a decision that may be held to apply to misdemeanor cases as well. In other recent cases, the Supreme Court has also extended to the states the Fifth Amendment guarantee against self-incrimination...
...jailhouse doors" to hundreds of prisoners whose convictions may be nullified retroactively. In an important decision last month (Linkletter v. Louisiana), the court answered much of the criticism by holding that retroactivity depends on each decision's purpose. When a ruling concerns the right to counsel, as in Gideon, it is likely to be made retroactive, because it raises new questions about the prisoner's actual guilt. By contrast, the court refused to make Mapp retroactive because that decision had what lawyers call the "prophylactic" purpose of deterring lawless police action in the future...
Many implications of the Supreme Court's decisions have yet to be resolved. The Gideon ruling raised an infinitely complex question: At what precise moment after his arrest is a suspect entitled to counsel? For federal defendants, this issue has been solved. In Mallory v. U.S. (1957), the Supreme Court emphasized that anyone under federal arrest must be taken "without unnecessary delay" before a U.S. commissioner for instruction on his rights to silence and counsel; admissions obtained during an excessive delay must be excluded. The 1964 Criminal Justice Act requires as well that all indigents must be assigned lawyers...
...Appeals for the Second Circuit, the undertaking is being researched by 80 of the country's top police officers, judges and lawyers. One A.B.A. committee seeks ways to get lawyers for indigents in all 3,100 of the nation's counties; more than two years after Gideon, there has been virtually no progress in 2,900 counties handling 70% of U.S. criminal cases. Another committee is investigating sentencing procedures. At present, no courts in the U.S. save in Connecticut and Massachusetts have the power to review sentences, however harsh or inadequate, unless they exceed statutory maximums. A more...