'Gideon' is 50 but Texas' right to counsel preceded it

Grits is headed to the capitol this morning for an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of Gideon v. Wainwright, the US Supreme Court decision that enshrined the right to counsel in criminal cases as a constitutional mandate. Here are several notable media items related to the anniversary:

• Law.com: 50 years ago 'Gideon' affirmed the right to counsel
• The Crime Report: Chasing Gideon  
• NY Times: Gideon's muted trumpet
• NY Times: The Right to Counsel: Badly battered at 50
• NPR: 50 years after key case, problems defending the poor persist
• The Atlantic: Eric Holder: A 'state of crisis' for the right to counsel 
• The Atlantic: In Texas, from a chief justice, welcome candor about unequal justice
• Houston Chronicle: Budget cuts threaten Sixth Amendment right
• Los Angeles Review of Books: Pleading Out: America's broken indigent defense system  
• Heritage Foundation: Gideon v. Wainwright: Celebrating 50 years of constitutional protection

As Grits mentioned earlier, Texas beat the rest of the nation to the punch on this question. Notably, the right to counsel was enshrined in the state's 1876 Constitution in Article 1, Section 10, a notion that goes back to the 1836 "Declaration of Rights" articulating the reasons for secession from Mexico. A newly published history of the Texas Supreme Court mentioned (p. 65) that, in Calvin v. State (1860), the Texas Supreme Court ruled "the state had a duty to provide counsel for blacks who could not afford their own - a progressive notion that would not be enshrined in federal jurisprudence until more than a century later." Indeed, according to a recent article (pdf) in the Texas Bar Journal, "The earliest Texas statute spelling out [a right to counsel] in non-capital cases preceded Gideon by four years, but the practice of appointing counsel in felony cases had long existed. In requiring counsel in capital cases, Texas was ahead of the Supreme Court by at least 75 years."

That doesn't necessarily mean we're doing a great job on this issue today, especially given the massive caseloads carried by some appointed attorneys in major Texas cities. But I was certainly pleased to learn Texas was ahead of the rest of the country on this topic.