Gideon v. Wainwright

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Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), is a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court fully incorporated the Sixth Amendments right to counsel provision to the states, requiring them to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who are unable to afford their own. The case extended the right to counsel, which had been found under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to impose requirements on the federal government, by imposing those requirements upon the states as well. The Court reasoned that the assistance of counsel is "one of the safeguards of the Sixth Amendment deemed necessary to insure fundamental human rights of life and liberty", and that the Sixth Amendment serves as a warning that "if the constitutional safeguards it provides be lost, justice will not still be done."

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