Griffin v. Illinois
Supreme Court of the United States
The petitioners Griffin and Crenshaw were tried together and convicted of armed robbery in the Criminal Court of Cook County, Illinois. Immediately after their conviction they filed a motion in the trial court asking that a certified copy of the entire record, including a stenographic transcript of the proceedings, be furnished them without cost.
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The petitioners Griffin and Crenshaw were tried together and convicted of armed robbery in the Criminal Court of Cook County, Illinois. Immediately after their conviction they filed a motion in the trial court asking that a certified copy of the entire record, including a stenographic transcript of the proceedings, be furnished them without cost. They alleged that they were “poor persons with no means of paying the necessary fees to acquire the Transcript and Court Records needed to prosecute an appeal. . . .” These allegations were not denied. Under Illinois law in order to get full direct…
1Concurring in the judgmentJustice Frankfurter
The admonition of de Tocqueville not to confuse the familiar with the necessary has vivid application to appeals in criminal cases. The right to an appeal from a conviction for crime is today so established that this leads to the easy assumption that it is fundamental to the protection of life and liberty and therefore a necessary ingredient of due process of law. “Due process” is, perhaps, the least frozen concept of our law — the least *21confined to history and the most absorptive of powerful social standards of a progressive society. But neither the unfolding content of “due process” nor the…
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- Diaz v. GonzalezSupreme Court of the United States · 1923
- People v. La FranaIllinois Supreme Court · 1954
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3Cited by3,617 opinions
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