Supreme Court unanimously rules states must provide lawyers to poor defendants in Gideon v. Wainwright

The Supreme Court unanimously overruled Betts v. Brady (1942) and held that the Sixth Amendment's right to counsel is a fundamental right that states must honor through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Clarence Earl Gideon, a Florida man convicted of breaking and entering after representing himself at trial because he could not afford a lawyer, had petitioned the Court from prison in a handwritten letter. After the ruling, Gideon was retried with appointed counsel, acquitted, and approximately 2,000 Florida prisoners who had been convicted without lawyers were freed or retried.