Minnesota Attorney General Walter Mondale with Gov. Karl Rolvaag in 1964 (Bettmann/Corbis)
Fifty years ago, on March 18, 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all criminal defendants are entitled to representation by counsel, thanks, in part, to the efforts of a young Walter Mondale, then Attorney General of Minnesota, who led a group of 23 Attorneys General in submitting an amicus brief to the Court in support of right to counsel for an indigent man, Clarence Gideon.
Gideon, the plaintiff in the 1963 case, had been convicted of burglary after being denied the right to counsel at his trial. From his prison cell, he wrote an appeal to the Supreme Court, and the high court agreed to hear the case. The current ABA Journal is running a story about the case, the circumstances leading to New York Times correspondent Anthony Lewis writing the classic bestseller Gideon’s Trumpet, and the continuing challenges of equal justice for all (story).
The Court’s ruling set the stage for the public defender system which provides counsel to those unable to afford it.