Gilbert Cranberg: A PROMISE UNREALIZED

The anniversary of a signature event many times is marked by noting significant developments in the interim. Not so with the way the New York Times observed the 50^th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Gideon vs. Wainwright, the landmark case that established the right of poor people accused of crimes to be represented by attorneys. The Times used the anniversary not to dwell on the ruling’s achievements, but to remind readers of how far short of the initial promise it has fallen.

The headline on the March 10 editorial-page piece by Lincoln Caplan accurately describes the article: “The Right to Counsel: Badly Battered at 50.” Caplan cited a litany of failures that have made the ideal of equal justice an illusion: overworked defense lawyers and underfunded systems for paying them; appellate courts too willing to tolerate inferior justice for the poor; and numerous examples of abuse, including a death penalty conviction upheld even though the main defense lawyer drank a quart of vodka each night of the trial, another in which a court allowed the death penalty to stand despite evidence that the lead defense lawyer slept during the trial.

These are especially eye-catching cases, but it’s the routine day-to-day ill treatment of the poor that ought to command attention. When I worked at the Des Moines Register, I examined the records of all of the state’s 1,800 prison inmates. I wrote about it in 1958:

“More than 300 of the Iowa prisoners – almost one out of five – were not represented by an attorney. Included are many men charged with serious crimes, including murder. Seven of the prisoners now serving life terms did not have attorneys to act in their behalf at the time of sentencing.

“At least four prisoners sentenced without an attorney were subsequently examined in prison [and] found to be mentally ill.”

How could hundreds of unrepresented people have been imprisoned in Iowa, a reasonably enlightened place, despite the fact that the state had its own guarantee of the right to an attorney for indigent defendants?  My guess is that many, if not most, were told of their right to a lawyer, but then waived the appointment of counsel mistakenly believing that because they were guilty they did not need an attorney, or possibly in a naïve bid to curry favor with prosecutors.

The 50^th anniversary of Gideon ought to be the occasion for Iowa’s two law schools, at the University of Iowa and Drake University, to update the Register’s 1958 study. Are Iowans, among them the mentally ill, still being sent to prison, even for life, without the benefit of legal advice? It would be fascinating to find out.