Powell v. Alabama
Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932) was a United States Supreme Court decision which decided that in a capital trial court the defendant must be designated counsel if the judge feels that the accused is incapable of leading his own defense.
Case
The case stems from a crime that occurred in 1931. Nine African Americans, Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson, Andy and Roy Wright, Eugene Williams, were accused of raping two white women in a freight car while passing through the state of Alabama. The group was commonly known as Scottsborough Boys. They were on the train when two white men picked a fight and lost. Originally both girls claimed that they were raped by the Scottsborough Boys but later one of them retracted the claim. All of them, but Roy Wright, were sentenced to death in series of one day trials. The defendants were only given access to their lawyers immediately before the trial and little or no defense strategy was planned. The ruling was appealed on the grounds that group was not provided adequate legal counsel. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled 6-to-1 that the trial was fair (the strongly dissenting opinion was from the Chief Justice Anderson) and it was appealed to the Supreme Court.
The bench
Opinion
- Written by: Justice George Sutherland
- Joined by: Chief Justice Charles E. Hughes and Justices Willis Van Devanter, Harlan Fiske Stone, Owen J. Roberts, Louis D. Brandeis and Benjamin N. Cardozo.
Dissenting
- Written by: Justice Pierce Butler
- Joined by: Justice James C. McReynolds
Justices Devanter, McReynolds, Sutherland and Butler were members of the so called Four Horsemen a group that opposed Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.
Subsequent history
Whether or not the Powell v. Alabama decision applied to non-captial cases sparked heated debate. Betts v. Brady initially decided that unless there were special circumstances like, iliteracy, stupidity or being in an especially complicated trial, there was no need for a court apointed attorney. That decision, was ultimately overturned in Gideon v. Wainwright, which established the right to a lawyer in all cases.