Legal Counsel Is No Frill

Since 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that all people faced with jail are entitled to a court-appointed lawyer if they cannot afford their own. This right applies to the trial and to an appeal based on the weight of the evidence or the fairness of the trial.

But what about a defendant who argues that his attorney was incompetent or too overloaded to adequately represent him? Most states, including California, provide an indigent defendant a lawyer for such issues. Georgia does not. A case before the Supreme Court today presents a stark, compelling argument why all states should do so.

The court will decide whether to take up an appeal by a Georgia death row inmate, Exzavious Lee Gibson, who was convicted in 1990 of a brutal murder. Five years later, a Georgia agency that advises death row inmates hurriedly filed a boilerplate habeas corpus claim--asking for a review on the legality of the prisoner’s detention--in Gibson’s case and several others before new state guidelines tightening deadlines for such proceedings took effect. Congress had just cut off federal funding for the center, which had to lay off most of its lawyers.

So Gibson, whose IQ has been measured at between 76 and 82, sat alone at the defense table when Judge J. Carlisle Overstreet heard his habeas petition in September 1996, and only the state presented evidence.

From the hearing transcript:

Judge: OK, Mr. Gibson, do you want to proceed?

Gibson: I don’t have an attorney.

Judge: I understand that.

Gibson: I am not waiving my rights.

Judge: I understand that. Do you have any evidence that you want to put up?

Gibson: I don’t know what to plead.

Judge: Huh?

Gibson: I don’t know what to plead.

Judge: I am not asking you to plead anything. I am just asking you if you have anything you want to put up, anything you want to introduce to this court.

Gibson: But I don’t have an attorney.

Six months later Overstreet upheld the verdict and sentence against Gibson, and two years later the Georgia Supreme Court upheld Overstreet. Surely the transcript will persuade even the toughest doubters on the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Gibson’s claim. Without counsel, the constitutional right to habeas corpus is utterly meaningless.