Gideon Vs Wainwright

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obscured by the Fourteenth
Amendment which states, �No State shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges of citizens of the United States.� As a result, many
questions begin to arise which seek to determine the true right of the
accused to the assistance of counsel. Should legal counsel be provided by
the government if the accused lacks the funds to assemble a counsel for his
defense? Or, on the other hand, does this amendment set the responsibility
of assembling a defensive counsel on the accused even if he or she lacks
the funds to do so?
Also, do the states have the right to make their own legislation
regarding the right of the indigent accused to have counsel appointed to
them in the state trials, or does the Fourteenth Amendment prevent this?
The Supreme Court was faced with answering these questions in the case of
Gideon v. Wainwright.
In June of 1961, Clarence Earl Gideon, a fifty year old petty thief,
drifter, and gambler who had spent much of his ...

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to legal counsel ensured by the Sixth
Amendment was only applicable to federal cases, and states had the right to
handle the matter of the appointment of legal counsel to the defense in
state cases at their discretion (Asch, 135). This practice was an effect of
the outcome of the United States Supreme Court case of Betts v. Brady
decided in 1942. In this case, an unemployed farm worker in Maryland named
Smith Betts was charged with robbery requested that the court appoint
counsel to his defense. The judge denied this request on the grounds that
in that county it was not practice in that county for the court to appoint
counsel to poor defendants only in capital cases. Like Gideon, ...

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