Case Citator › Gideon v. Wainwright

Gideon v. Wainwright

Is it still good law? What later courts have actually done to this case.

Limited by some courts
Court
Supreme Court of the United States
Citation
372 U.S. 335
Decided
Confirmed treatments
2
Flagged citations read
350 of 350
Citing cases (total)
15,565
Treatment dates
1964–1973
Limited by some courts
At least one reviewed court has limited this case’s holding to narrower facts or a narrower rule. No reviewed court has overruled it. Gideon v. Wainwright is limited among the reviewed cases: all 350 flagged citations have been read, with the 2 confirmed treatments listed below. DeToro v. Pepersack declined to extend Gideon's categorical appointed-counsel rule to every stage of a felony prosecution, and Gagnon v. Scarpelli declined to import that categorical approach into probation and parole revocation hearings.
More on how this was screened

The other reviewed opinions followed Gideon or reported its displacement of Betts v. Brady and older state precedent. Later Supreme Court decisions concerning misdemeanors, civil proceedings, appeals, and collateral review applied Gideon's own criminal-trial boundary or primarily treated Argersinger, Douglas, Anders, Finley, or Bounds; they did not independently wound Gideon.

Every treatment on this page is written from the citing opinion itself, with a verbatim quote, never copied from a commercial citator. A citation flagged by our screen but not shown here was read and found not to weaken this case.

15,565 later cases cite Gideon v. Wainwright; 350 of those citations sat close to treatment language and were flagged for reading, and all of them have been read. Citations that did not sit near treatment language were not flagged and were not read one by one, so a court that weakened this case without using any of that language would not appear here.

Relying on Gideon v. Wainwright?

This page shows what later courts did to it. Ask about your specific facts and see whether it still carries your argument, with citations you can check.

Treatments

Limited

  • The Fourth Circuit declined to extend Gideon's categorical right to counsel to every stage of a felony prosecution, limiting it to critical stages and rejecting the claim for noncritical preliminary hearings.

    DeToro v. Pepersack · Fourth Circuit · filed

    DeToro makes two contentions before-this court. He contends, first of all, that, the right of an accused to counsel in felony cases, Gideon v. Wainwright, 372: U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), extends to all stages in the judicial process and not only to those that may be characterized as critical. ... Despite the very able arguments advanced by counsel for DeToro, we are unable to accept either of these contentions.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

  • The Supreme Court declined to extend Gideon's categorical appointed-counsel rule to probation and parole revocation hearings, retaining a case-by-case due-process approach.

    Gagnon v. Scarpelli · Supreme Court of the United States · filed

    In so concluding, we are of course aware that the case-by-case approach to the right to counsel in felony prosecutions adopted in Betts v. Brady, 316 U. S. 455 (1942), was later rejected in favor of a per se rule in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 (1963). See also Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U. S. 25 (1972). We do not, however, draw from Gideon and Argersinger the conclusion that a case-by-case approach to furnishing counsel is necessarily inadequate to protect constitutional rights asserted in varying types of proceedings: there are critical differences between criminal trials and probation or parole revocation hearings, and both society and the probationer or parolee have stakes in preserving these differences.
    Read the full opinion on CourtListener →

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