Powell v. Alabama 287 U.S. 45 (1932)

• Author: Barbara Allen Babcock
• Pages: 1981

Page 1981

Powell was the famous "Scottsboro boys" case in which "young, ignorant, illiterate blacks were convicted and sentenced to death without the effective appointment of counsel to aid them. The trials were in a hostile community, far from the defendants' homes; the accusation was rape of two white women, a crime "regarded with especial horror in the community."

In an early major use of the DUE PROCESS clause to regulate the administration of criminal justice by the states, the Supreme Court held that the trials were fundamentally unfair. The facts of the case made this portentous holding an easy one: the defendants were tried in one day, the defense was entirely pro forma, and the death sentence was immediately imposed on all seven defendants without regard to individual culpability or circumstance. Powell was not a Sixth Amendment RIGHT TO COUNSEL case; three decades would pass before that guarantee was imported into due process in GIDEON V. WAINWRIGHT (1963). But the language of the Court in expounding the importance of counsel to a fair trial was repeatedly quoted as the Sixth Amendment right developed: "[the layman] lacks both the skill and knowledge adequately to prepare his defense, even though he has a perfect one. He requires the guiding hand of...