Betts o. Brady (1942)
counsel Legal advice or representation.
(writ of) habeas corpus Court order re­ quiring that a person in custody be brought before a court so a judge can determine the legality of keeping him or her in jail. precedent An earlier court decision used as a guide or model in deciding similar cases. capital crime Crime for which the death sentence can be imposed.
Smith Betts was a 43-year-old farm worker, unemployed and on welfare, when he was charged with robbery in Carroll County, Mar­ yland. Because he was without money to se­ cure counsel, Betts asked the judge to appoint an attorney to represent him. The judge refused because the local practice was to appoint lawyers only for charges of murder or rape. Betts defended himself in court and was convicted of robbery.
Betts then appealed to the highest state court for a writ of habeas corpus. He alleged that he had been denied his Sixth Amend­ ment right to counsel and that the court's de­ nial of representation had violated the
Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of due process. He asked the court to order his con­ viction overturned and his release from pris­ on. ChiefJudge Carroll Bond refused, saying that the right to counsel was not a fundamen­ tal right and that the Sixth Amendment did not apply to the states.
Judge Bond also pointed out that Betts was not helpless. He was an adult, of average in­ telligence, and not completely unfamiliar with court procedure because he had been tried for larceny on an earlier occasion and had been convicted. The judge felt that Betts was capable of putting on an adequate and appropriate defense for himself.
Unsuccessful in the state courts, Betts turned to the United States Supreme Court.
The issue before the Court: Did the courts of
Maryland violate the defendant's right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment and thereby also violate the Fourteenth Amend­ ment guarantee of due process?
The Court decided by a vote of~ to affirm the decision of the Maryland state courts.
Agreeing generally with Judge Bond, the
Court ruled that the due process clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment does not necessarily extend the Sixth Amendment to state courts.
Therefore, the states are not always required to provide lawyers for defendants who are too poor to pay for counsel.
Justice Owen Roberts, writing for the ma­ jority of the Court, chose to make no "hard and fast rule" concerning the states in this area. The justices decided in accordance with the precedent set ten years earlier in Powell v. Alabama (1932). In that case, the Supreme
Court had ruled that there were "common and fundamental ideas of fairness and right" that should guide the state courts in this mat­ ter.
Court-appointed attorneys, it said, should be provided for a defendant charged with a capital crime or one in certain "special cir­ cumstances." These circumstances applied, for instance, to defendants who were illiter­ ate, mentally handicapped, or totally igno­ rant of the law and court procedure. The
Court did not think that Betts met any of these requirements.
Justice Hugo Black, along with Justices
Douglas and Murphy, was one of the dissent­ ing justices. Believing that the right to coun­ sel was fundamental to a fair trial, Black wrote:
I believe the Fourteenth Amendment made the Sixth applicable to the states, . . . A practice cannot be reconciled with "common and fundamental fairness and right" which subjects innocent men to increased dangers of conviction merely because of their pover­ ty .... denial of counsel has made it impos­ sible to conclude, with any satisfactory degree of certainty, that the defendant's case was adequately presented. mSTORIC SUPREME COURT DECISIONS
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Supreme Court Decision 14

Black concluded that no one should be de­ prived of legal counsel simply because ofpov­ erty . "Any other practice," he said, "seems to me to defeat the promise of our democratic so­ ciety to provide equal justice under the law."
As a result of the Betts ruling, many poor defendants would go on trial in state courts without attorneys to represent them. The de­ cision was widely criticized. One prominent lawyer of the time pointed out that the deci­ sion seemed badly timed since, in 1942,
Americans and their allies were fighting to assure people their fundamental democratic rights. Nevertheless, Betts v. Brady re­ mained the Court's rule for the next twenty years. mSTORIC SUPREME COURT DECISIONS
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