LDF Seeks Clarification on Supreme Court Rule on Right to Counsel

Press Release
March 29, 1966

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- 09684dde-b692-ee11-be37-00224827e97b

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Press Releases, Volume 3. LDF Seeks Clarification on Supreme Court Rule on Right to Counsel, 1966. 09684dde-b692-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/e111f491-d5e1-40fe-9a13-2f26e5b5712c/ldf-seeks-clarification-on-supreme-court-rule-on-right-to-counsel. Accessed November 23, 2025.

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    10 Columbus Cirele 
New York, N.Y. 10019 
JUdson 6-8397 

NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE 
Presiden 

ope Francis E. Rivers 
£ Director-Counsel FOR RELEASE 

Tafiee ceenbere Tesaar 
March 29, 1966 

LDF SEEKS ARIFICATION 

B OF SUPREM 
ON RIGHT TO 

URT RULE 
COUNSEL 

WASHINGTON---=The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund today 

asked the Supreme Court to gule on whether state courts are to 

provide legal counsel for indigent defendants accused of mis- 

demeanors. 

The principal issue in the Fund's petition in behalf of Robert 

Winters, a 24-year-old Negro bus boy, is whether a 1963 Supreme 

Court ruling applies to all defendants who cannot afford a lawyer 

or only to those charged with felonies. 

The 1963 case, Gideon v. Wainwright, established a judicial 

doctrine that state courts must appoint lawyers for defendants who 

cannot afford to retain counsel. 

Winters was convicted of a morals offense involving a white 

woman in Little Rock, Ark., and sentenced to 30 days in jail and 

fined $254. 

Unable to pay the fine, he was committed to the County Penal 

Farm to work it off at the rate of one dollar a day, extending his 

jail sentence to nine-and-a-half months. 

The Legal Defense Fund argued before the Arkansas Supreme 

Court that Winters was not represented by a lawyer at his trial 

and therefore was unconstitutionally convicted. However, the 

Arkansas Supreme Court held that under Gideon v. Wainwrioht, a state 

need only supply a lawyer when a defendant is charged with a felony. 

Under Arkansas law, a felony is a crime punishable at a state 
penitentiary. Misdemeanors are usually punished by imprisonment 
at county work farmsor jails... Legal Defense Fund attorneys 
maintain that this.fas nothing to do with a defendant's need for a 

lawyer. 

Repraeetting Winters in the case are Legal Defen Fund 
Director-Counsel Jack Greenberg, James M, Nabrit III, Michael 
Meltsner, Alfred Feinberg and Gerald Smith of New York and John 
Walker of Little Rock. 

=30- 

Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public Information—Night Number 212 Riverside 9-8487

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LDF Seeks Clarification on Supreme Court Rule on Right to Counsel

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