Martinez v. Court of Appeal of California, Fourth Appellate District

The Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments of our Constitution guarantee that a person brought to trial in any state or federal court must be afforded the right to the assistance of counsel before he can be validly convicted and punished by imprisonment.1 In Faretta v. California, 422 U. S. 806 (1975), we decided that the defendant also “has a constitutional right to proceed without counsel when he voluntarily and intelligently elects to do so.” Id., at 807. Although that statement arguably embraces the entire judicial proceeding, we also phrased the question as whether a State may “constitutionally…