...Mr. Justice Black delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner was charged in a Florida state court with having broken and entered a poolroom with
intent to commit a misdemeanor. This offense is a felony under Florida law. 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."
"THE DEFENDANT: The United States Supreme Court says I am entitled to be represented by
Counsel."
Put to trial before a jury, Gideon conducted his defense about as well as could be expected from a
layman. He made an opening statement to the jury, cross-examined the State's witnesses,
presented witnesses in his own defense, declined to testify himself, and made a short argument
"emphasizing his innocence to the charge contained in the Information filed in this case." The jury
returned a verdict of guilty, and petitioner was sentenced to serve five years in the state prison.
Later, petitioner filed in the Florida Supreme Court this habeas corpus petition attacking his
conviction and sentence on the ground that the trial court's refusal to appoint counsel for him
denied him rights "guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights by the United States
Government." Treating the petition for habeas corpus as properly before it, the State Supreme
Court, "upon consideration thereof" but without an opinion, denied all relief. Since 1942, when
Betts v. Brady, 316 U.S. 455, was decided by a divided Court, the problem of a
defendant's federal constitutional right to counsel in a state court has been a continuing source of
controversy and litigation in both state and federal courts. To give this problem another review
here, we granted certiorari. 370 U.S. 908. Since Gideon was proceeding in forma pauperis, we
appointed counsel to represent him and requested both sides to discuss in their briefs and oral
arguments the following: "Should this Court's holding in Betts v. Brady, 316 U.S.
455, be reconsidered?"
The facts upon which Betts claimed that he had been unconstitutionally denied the right to have
counsel appointed to assist him are strikingly like the facts upon which Gideon here bases his
federal constitutional claim. Betts was indicted for robbery in a Maryland state court. On
arraignment, he told the trial judge of his lack of funds to hire a lawyer and asked the court to
appoint one for him. Betts was advised that it was not the practice in that county to appoint
counsel for indigent defendants except in murder and rape cases. He then pleaded not guilty, had
witnesses summoned, cross-examined the State's witnesses, examined his own, and chose not to
testify himself. He was found guilty by the judge, sitting without a jury, and sentenced to eight
years in prison. Like Gideon, Betts sought release by habeas corpus, alleging that he had been
denied the right to assistance of counsel in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Betts was
denied any relief, and on review this Court affirmed. It was held that a refusal to appoint counsel
for an indigent defendant charged with a felony did not necessarily violate the Due Process Clause
of the Fourteenth Amendment, which for reasons given the Court deemed to be the only
applicable federal constitutional provision. The Court said:
"Asserted denial [of due process] is to be tested by an appraisal of the totality of facts in a given
case. That which may, in one setting, constitute a denial of fundamental fairness, shocking to the
universal sense of justice, may, in other circumstances, and in the light of other considerations, fall
short of such denial." 316 U.S., at 462.
Treating due process as "a concept less rigid and more fluid than those envisaged in other specific
and particular provisions of the Bill of Rights," the Court held that refusal to appoint counsel
under the particular facts and circumstances in the Betts case was not so "offensive to the
common and fundamental ideas of fairness" as to amount to a denial of due process. Since the
facts and circumstances of the two cases are so nearly indistinguishable, we think the Betts
v. Brady holding if left standing would require us to reject Gideon's claim that the
Constitution guarantees him the assistance of counsel. Upon full reconsideration we conclude that
Betts v. Brady should be overruled.
II.
The Sixth Amendment provides, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the
right...to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence." We have construed this to mean that in
federal courts counsel must be provided for defendants unable to employ counsel unless the right
is competently and intelligently waived. Betts argued that this right is extended to indigent
defendants in state courts by the Fourteenth Amendment. In response the Court stated that, while
the Sixth Amendment laid down "no rule for the conduct of the States, the question recurs
whether the constraint laid by the Amendment upon the national courts expresses a rule so
fundamental and essential to a fair trial, and so, to due process of law, that it is made obligatory
upon the States by the Fourteenth Amendment." 316 U.S., at 465. In order to decide whether the
Sixth Amendment's guarantee of counsel is of this fundamental nature, the Court in Betts
set out and considered "[r]elevant data on the subject...afforded by constitutional and statutory
provisions subsisting in the colonies and the States prior to the inclusion of the Bill of Rights in
the national Constitution, and in the constitutional, legislative, and judicial history of the States to
the present date." 316 U.S., at 465. On the basis of this historical data the Court concluded that
"appointment of counsel is not a fundamental right, essential to a fair trial." 316 U.S., at 471. It
was for this reason the Betts Court refused to accept the contention that the Sixth
Amendment's guarantee of counsel for indigent federal defendants was extended to or, in the
words of that Court, "made obligatory upon the States by the Fourteenth Amendment." 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.
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. This same principle was recognized, explained, and applied in Powell v.
Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932), a case upholding the right of counsel, where the Court held
that despite sweeping language to the contrary in Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S.
516 (1884), the Fourteenth Amendment "embraced" those " "fundamental principles of liberty and
justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions," " even though they had been
"specifically dealt with in another part of the federal Constitution." 287 U.S., at 67. In many cases
other than Powell and Betts, this Court has looked to the fundamental nature of
original Bill of Rights guarantees to decide whether the Fourteenth Amendment makes them
obligatory on the States. Explicitly recognized to be of this "fundamental nature" and therefore
made immune from state invasion by the Fourteenth, or some part of it, are the First Amendment's
freedoms of speech, press, religion, assembly, association, and petition for redress of grievances.
For the same reason, though not always precisely the same terminology, the Court has made
obligatory on the States the Fifth Amendment's command that private property shall not be taken
for public use without just compensation, the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable
searches and seizures, and the Eighth's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. On the other hand,
this Court in Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319 (1937), refused to hold that the
Fourteenth Amendment made the double jeopardy provision of the Fifth Amendment obligatory
on the States. In so refusing, however, the Court, speaking through Mr. Justice Cardozo, was
careful to emphasize that "immunities that are valid as against the federal government by force of
the specific pledges of particular amendments have been found to be implicit in the concept of
ordered liberty, and thus, through the Fourteenth Amendment, become valid as against the states"
and that guarantees "in their origin...effective against the federal government alone" had by prior
cases "been taken over from the earlier articles of the federal bill of rights and brought within the
Fourteenth Amendment by a process of absorption." 302 U.S., at 324-325, 326.
We accept Betts v. Brady's assumption, based as it was on our prior cases, that a
provision of the Bill of Rights which is "fundamental and essential to a fair trial" is made
obligatory upon the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. We think the Court in Betts
was wrong, however, in concluding that the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of counsel is not one
of these fundamental rights. Ten years before Betts v. Brady, this Court, after full
consideration of all the historical data examined in Betts, had unequivocally declared that
"the right to the aid of counsel is of this fundamental character." Powell v.
Alabama, 287 U.S. 45, 68 (1932). While the Court at the close of its Powell
opinion did by its language, as this Court frequently does, limit its holding to the particular facts
and circumstances of that case, its conclusions about the fundamental nature of the right to
counsel are unmistakable. Several years later, in 1936, the Court reemphasized what it had said
about the fundamental nature of the right to counsel in this language:
"We concluded that certain fundamental rights, safeguarded by the first eight amendments against
federal action, were also safeguarded against state action by the due process of law clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment, and among them the fundamental right of the accused to the aid of
counsel in a criminal prosecution." Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U.S. 233,
243-244 (1936).
And again in 1938 this Court said:
"[The assistance of counsel] is one of the safeguards of the Sixth Amendment deemed necessary
to insure fundamental human rights of life and liberty...The Sixth Amendment stands as a constant
admonition that if the constitutional safeguards it provides be lost, justice will not "still be done."
" Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 462 (1938). To the same effect, see
Avery v. Alabama, 308 U.S. 444 (1940), and Smith v. O'Grady,
312 U.S. 329 (1941).
In light of these and many other prior decisions of this Court, it is not surprising that the
Betts Court, when faced with the contention that "one charged with crime, who is unable
to obtain counsel, must be furnished counsel by the State," conceded that "[e]xpressions in the
opinions of this court lend color to the argument..." 316 U.S., at 462-463. The fact is that in
deciding as it did -- that "appointment of counsel is not a fundamental right, essential to a fair
trial" -- the Court in Betts v. Brady made an abrupt break with its own
well-considered precedents. In returning to these old precedents, sounder we believe than the
new, we but restore constitutional principles established to achieve a fair system of justice. Not
only these precedents but also reason and reflection require us to recognize that in our adversary
system of criminal justice, 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.
Governments, both state and federal, quite properly spend vast sums of money to establish
machinery to try defendants accused of crime. Lawyers to prosecute are everywhere deemed
essential to protect the public's interest in an orderly society. Similarly, there are few defendants
charged with crime, few indeed, who fail to hire the best lawyers they can get to prepare and
present their defenses. That government hires lawyers to prosecute and defendants who have the
money hire lawyers to defend are the strongest indications of the widespread belief that lawyers in
criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries. 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. A defendant's
need for a lawyer is nowhere better stated than in the moving words of Mr. Justice Sutherland in
Powell v. Alabama:
"The right to be heard would be, in many cases, of little avail if it did not comprehend the right to
be heard by counsel. Even the intelligent and educated layman has small and sometimes no skill in
the science of law. If charged with crime, he is incapable, generally, of determining for himself
whether the indictment is good or bad. He is unfamiliar with the rules of evidence. Left without
the aid of counsel he may be put on trial without a proper charge, and convicted upon
incompetent evidence, or evidence irrelevant to the issue or otherwise inadmissible. 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. Twenty-two States, as friends
of the Court, argue that Betts was "an anachronism when handed down" and that it should
now be overruled. We agree.
The judgment is reversed and the cause is remanded to the Supreme Court of Florida for further
action not inconsistent with this opinion.
Reversed.
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