Note 842 — AMENDMENT 14 (continued 4)

332 U.S. 134, 136 (1947).—Acknowledging that the decision is in line with the precedent of Betts v. Brady, Justice Black, who was joined by Justices Douglas, Murphy, and Rutledge, lamented that the latter was a "kind of precedent [which he] had hoped that the Court would not perpetuate." Complaining of the loss of certainty occasioned by the Court's refusal to read into the Fourteenth Amendment the absolute right to counsel set out in the Sixth Amendment, Justice Black contends that the fair trial doctrine as enunciated in this and in the Adamson v. California case (see p. 1115) decided on the same day is "another example of the consequences which can be produced by the substitution of this Court's day-to-day opinion of what kind of trial is fair and decent for the kind of trial which the Bill of Rights guarantees."—Ibid. 139, 140.—In a second dissenting opinion meriting the concurrence of Justices Black, Douglas, and Murphy, Justice Rutledge, who also is of the opinion that the absolute right to counsel granted by the Sixth Amendment should be enjoyed in State criminal trials, insisted that even under the fair trial doctrine, the accused had not been accorded due process.