Powell v. Alabama

Powell v. Alabama
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 10, 1932 Decided November 7, 1932
Full case name	Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Andy Wright, and Olen Montgomery v. State of Alabama
Citations	287 U.S. 45 (more) 53 S. Ct. 55; 77 L. Ed. 158; 1932 U.S. LEXIS 5; 84 A.L.R. 527
Case history
Prior	Defendants convicted, Jackson County, Alabama Circuit Court, April 8, 1931; affirmed in part, 141 So. 201 (Ala. 1932); rehearing denied, Supreme Court of Alabama, April 9, 1932; cert. granted, 286 U.S. 540 (1932).
Subsequent	Supreme Court of Alabama reversed
Holding
Under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, a state must inform illiterate defendants charged with a capital crime that they have a right to be represented by counsel and must appoint counsel for defendants who cannot afford to hire a lawyer and give counsel adequate time to prepare for trial.
Court membership
Chief Justice Charles E. Hughes Associate Justices Willis Van Devanter · James C. McReynolds Louis Brandeis · George Sutherland Pierce Butler · Harlan F. Stone Owen Roberts · Benjamin N. Cardozo
Case opinions
Majority	Sutherland, joined by Hughes, Van Devanter, Brandeis, Stone, Roberts, Cardozo
Dissent	Butler, joined by McReynolds
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amends. VI, XIV

Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court reversed the convictions of nine young black men for allegedly raping two white women on a freight train near Scottsboro, Alabama. The majority of the Court reasoned that the right to retain and be represented by a lawyer was fundamental to a fair trial and that at least in some circumstances, the trial judge must inform a defendant of this right. In addition, if the defendant cannot afford a lawyer, the court must appoint one sufficiently far in advance of trial to permit the lawyer to prepare adequately for the trial.

Powell was the first time the Court had reversed a state criminal conviction for a violation of a criminal procedural provision of the United States Bill of Rights.^[1] In effect, it held that the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause included at least part of the right to counsel referred to in the Sixth Amendment, making that much of the Bill of Rights binding on the states. Before Powell, the Court had reversed state criminal convictions only for racial discrimination in jury selection — a practice that violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.^[1] Powell has been praised by legal scholars for upholding the American adversarial system in respect to criminal law since the system "relies upon attorneys to hold the state to its burden" which is harder to maintain if the defendants have ineffective assistance of counsel.^[2]