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Dates: during 1960-1969
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What is now under way is a concerted effort by the Supreme Court to make the Bill of Rights a reality for all Americans. A landmark in this process occurred in the 1947 case of Adamson v. California, when the court debated whether state courts should be bound by the Fifth Amendment's provision that a defendant may not be forced to testify against himself. Four Justices argued that the 14th Amendment's due-process clause was a form of "shorthand" for all the guarantees spelled out in the first eight amendments, and that the Bill of Rights...
...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...
These rulings have inevitably stirred cries that the Supreme Court is "opening the 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...
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...
Despite the furor over Mallory, the Supreme Court last year tackled the interrogation problem at the state level with the now-famous decision in Escobedo v. Illinois. In its most controversial action yet, the court voided Chicago Laborer Danny Escobedo's murder confession because it was made after the police had refused to let him see his lawyer, who was actually waiting in the station house at the time. Though vaguely worded, the court's ruling indicated that the right to counsel begins when police start grilling a prime suspect-a plainly impractical proposition, declared dissenting Justice Byron...