Betts v. Brady

Betts v. Brady
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 13–14, 1942 Decided June 1, 1942
Full case name	Betts v. Brady
Citations	316 U.S. 455 (more) 62 S. Ct. 1252; 86 L. Ed. 1595; 1942 U.S. LEXIS 489
Case history
Prior	None
Holding
Where a man is tried for robbery, due process of law does not demand that Maryland furnish counsel to an indigent defendant.
Court membership
Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone Associate Justices Owen Roberts · Hugo Black Stanley F. Reed · Felix Frankfurter William O. Douglas · Frank Murphy James F. Byrnes · Robert H. Jackson
Case opinions
Majority	Roberts, joined by Stone, Reed, Frankfurter, Byrnes, Jackson
Dissent	Black, joined by Douglas, Murphy
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amends. VI, XIV
Overruled by
Gideon v. Wainwright (1963)

Betts v. Brady, 316 U.S. 455 (1942), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that denied counsel to indigent defendants prosecuted by a state. The reinforcement that such a case is not to be reckoned as denial of fundamental due process was famously overruled by Gideon v. Wainwright.^[1] In the dissent, Justice Hugo Black famously opined that "A practice cannot be reconciled with "common and fundamental ideas of fairness and right which subjects innocent men to increased dangers of conviction merely because of their poverty."^[2]