Reinventing Gideon v. Wainwright: Holistic Defenders, Indigent Defendants, and the Right to Counsel

It's difficult to get excited about indigent defense reform-talking about taking a very bad system and making it a little less bad. A more wholesale revolution has to occur.1

- Douglas Ammar, Executive Director of the Georgia Justice Project (an organization dedicated to intensive holistic representation for its indigent clients).

I. Introduction

Not until the late date of 1963 in Gideon v. Wainwright did the Supreme Court begin requiring the states to provide counsel for indigent defendants.2 Gideon left many questions unanswered, however, and effectively put the burden on each state to determine the exact means and methods of fulfilling this constitutional requirement. Since then, states have "unenthusiastically"3 searched for their own ways to satisfy Gideon's mandate with varying degrees of success. Some states (perhaps most) have fallen dangerously short.