Gerald Gault Court Case Summary

The issue in this case revolves around the civil rights under the Constitution of the United States for a juvenile that is going through proceedings as a delinquent when there is a potential for incarceration. Gerald Gault was a 15-year-old that was accused of making an obscene telephone call to his neighbor, a Mrs. Cook, on June 8, 1964. Subsequently, Mrs. Cook filed a complaint with the police regarding the incident. Eventually that same day, Gerald Gault and Ronald Lewis, a friend, were arrested for the incident and transported to the Children’s Detention Home. At the time of his arrest, Gault was on probation for being in the company of another boy who was in possession of a wallet which was stolen from a woman’s purse. When Gault

Cook was not in attendance but no court recording or transcript was made for the hearing. During the hearing, Gault was questioned by the judge regarding the incident and there were conflicting accounts as to what, if anything, Gault admitted to doing. After the hearing, Gault was taken back to the Child’s Detention Home where is was kept in custody for several more days prior to being released. Upon his release, Gault’s parents were notified of another hearing set for June 15, 1964. That same day, the arresting officer filed a petition with the court. The petition was never served on Gault or his parents and his parents did not actually see or even have knowledge about the petition until the day of his habeas corpus hearing on August 17, 1964 (In re Gault,

Supreme Court reviewed previous case law, Betts v. Brady, which questioned the rights of due process for an indigent defendant under the Fourteenth Amendment which could not afford to retain an attorney for his court proceedings and the state denied his request for appointed counsel. In 1942 when this case was originally heard, the Court ruled that the lower courts did not violate the petitioner Fourteenth Amendment rights. However, this Court overruled the previous ruling with a unanimous vote. The Court viewed the importance of due process stating, “the procedural rules which have been fashioned from the generality of due process are our best instruments for the distillation and evaluation of essential facts from the conflicting… data that life and our adversary methods present (In re Gault, 2017).” The court noted that if Gault had been 18 years of age at the time of his arrest, he would have been afforded the procedural safeguards available to adults. They went on to closely examine the juvenile court system, determining that while there are legitimate reasons for treating juveniles and adults differently, juveniles facing an adjudication of delinquency involving incarceration are entitled to certain procedural safeguards under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Gault by reversing and remanding his sentence from the lower courts (In re Gault,