The history of the modern right to counsel for defendants who cannot afford to pay for counsel or lawyer goes back over a century ago; the Indiana Supreme Court in Webb v. Baird, 6 Ind. 13 (1853), officially recognized the right to counsel for a person accused of a crime. However, this decision was not based on constitutional or statutory law but warranted under “the principles of a civilized society.” Since the case of Webb v. Baird, the courts have immensely extended the right to counsel beyond just appointing an indigent person an attorney. For more than a hundred years, the Right to Counsel Clause was interpreted as simply granting the right to retain a private attorney to a defendant but didn’t mean that a poor criminal defendant had …show more content…
Six years later, in Johnson v. Zerbst, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a poor federal criminal defendant who faces serious criminal charges is entitled to an attorney at the expense of the government. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, the right to counsel is thought necessary to protect fundamental human rights of life and liberty and that an average person accused of a crime does not have the professional legal skill to protect himself/herself. Unfortunately, this right only applied to indigent defendants facing serious charges in federal court but did not apply to the states. It wasn’t until 1963 in the case of Gideon v. Wainwright, which is a landmark case in the United States Supreme Court when the principle that state courts were required to provide defendants in criminal cases with legal counsel was established. This case ruled that the 6th Amendment of the Bill of Rights required the government to provide free legal counsel to indigent defendants in criminal cases. Abe Fortas who represented Gideon established the principle “that every man, the rich, the poor, and poor as well as rich, is entitled to the benefit of counsel.” There was also the case of Miranda v. Arizona following the Gideon case, extending the rule to apply even during interrogation by