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Betts V Brady
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- In Johnson V. Zerbst, the Supreme Court decided that defendants in Federal cases had the right to legal council.
- In Powell V. Alabama, the Court decided that the accused in Federal Courts had the right to an attorney even if they could not afford one.
Betts V Brady (1942)
- Betts was a suspected robber who was held without trial and without council.
- Betts requested the right of Habeus Corpus because he had not been given legal council.
- The circuit court of Washington County, Maryland denied him this right.
- Betts requested certiorari with the Supreme Court.
- In a six-to-three decision, the court decided that Betts did not have the right to legal council as stated in the sixth amendment.
Majority Opinion:
"The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the conviction and incarceration of one whose trial is offensive to the common and fundamental ideas of fairness and right, and while want of counsel in a particular case may result in a conviction lacking in such fundamental fairness, we cannot say that the amendment embodies an inexorable command that no trial for any offense, or in any court, can be fairly conducted and justice accorded a defendant who is not represented by counsel."
-Owen Roberts
Dissenting Opinion:
"A practice cannot be reconciled with ‘common and fundamental ideas of fairness and right,’ which subjects innocent men to increased dangers of conviction merely because of their poverty. Whether a man is innocent cannot be determined from a trial in which, as here, denial of counsel has made it impossible to conclude, with any satisfactory degree of certainty, that the defendant's case was adequately presented."
-Hugo Black
- According to Wikipedia.org, the holding was that "Due process of law demands that where a man is tried for robbery, Maryland does not have to furnish counsel to an indigent defendant."
- In other words, the accused only had the right to an attorney in Federal cases, not State cases.
The ruling for this case was later overturned in 1963 with Gideon V. Wainwright.
The Facts
To sum it all up
The Decision