holding that “the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution require only that no indigent criminal defendant be sentenced to a term of imprisonment unless the State has afforded him the right to assistance of appointed counsel in his defense” (emphasis added)
How later courts described this case
- holding that “the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution require only that no indigent criminal defendant be sentenced to a term of imprisonment unless the State has afforded him the right to assistance of appointed counsel in his defense” (emphasis added)
- holding that a misdemeanor conviction for shoplifting where a defendant was not provided counsel did not violate the Sixth Amendment because his sentence consisted of a fine only, even though the statute authorized up to a year of jail time
- determining that Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to U.S. Constitution require "that no indigent criminal defendant be sentenced to a term of imprisonment unless the State has afforded him the right to assistance of counsel in his defense"
- recognizing that, under the Sixth Amendment right to counsel andFourteenth Amendment Due Process guarantees, a defendant must be afforded the benefits of counsel in cases where the defendant receives jail time
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Reported overruled by Baldasar v. Illinois, 446 U.S. 222 (1980) — not on the Supreme Court's list
Baldasar (lacking a majority opinion) overruled Scott.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Blackmun,
dissenting.
For substantially the reasons stated by Mr. Justice Brennan in Parts I and II of his dissenting opinion, I would hold that the right to counsel secured by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments extends at least as far as the right to jury trial secured by those Amendments. Accordingly, I would hold that an indigent defendant in a state criminal case must be afforded appointed 'counsel whenever the defendant is prose *390 cuted for a nonpetty criminal offense, that is, one punishable by more than six months’ imprisonment, see Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U. S. 145 (1968); Baldwin v. New York, 399 U. S. 66 (1970), or whenever the defendant is convicted of an offense and is actually subjected to a term of imprisonment, Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U. S. 25 (1972).
This resolution, I feel, would provide the “bright line” that defendants, prosecutors, and trial and appellate courts all deserve and, at the same time, would reconcile on a principled basis the important considerations that led to the decisions in Duncan, Baldwin, and Argersinger .
On this approach, of course, the judgment of the Supreme Court of Illinois upholding petitioner Scott’s conviction should be reversed, since he was convicted of an offense for which he was constitutionally entitled to a jury trial. I, therefore, dissent.