“Even in the cases in which kids are represented, there’s wide disparity with regard to the quality and the resources awarded their representation,” said Laura Cohen, director of the Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic at Rutgers University.Ĭhicago is credited with creating the first juvenile justice system, in 1899, according to the National Academies Press.ĭavid Tanenhaus, a professor of history and law at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said the juvenile system was not designed to have the same formality and procedures as the adult criminal system. Minors also are encouraged to waive their right to a lawyer and are denied access to a lawyer after sentencing, according to the report. Minors who do get lawyers often don’t get them until after they’ve been interrogated by police, and they must pay for their own “free” counsel, the report said.
But 53 years later, legal experts say the goal of Gault’s case has not been met: Children across the states still aren’t automatically provided their right to legal counsel.Ī 2017 report from the National Juvenile Defender Center, on the ruling’s 50th anniversary, found that no state guarantees minors access to a lawyer. In re Gault – as the court’s 1967 ruling is known – for the first time officially recognized that children have the same legal rights as adults. But Gault was a minor, and the criminal justice system treats minors differently from adults. Had Gault been 18, he would have been provided legal counsel automatically, a right afforded by the 14th Amendment to all adults who are arrested. The judge sentenced Gault, who was on probation at the time of his arrest, to six years in juvenile detention. As Gault’s case made its way through the court, the judge questioned Gault, never with a lawyer present and sometimes without even his parents, and no transcript or recordings were made. Police made no attempt to notify Gault’s parents of his arrest – they only found out months later. The juvenile justice system was bewildering to Gault, who was 15 when he was taken into custody, and his family, according to Supreme Court testimony. But today, 53 years later, legal representation remains uneven, children’s advocates say. Supreme Court, whose ruling established the right of minors to be represented by attorneys. She called the police, and both boys were arrested and taken to a juvenile detention facility in Gila County. They made an obscene phone call to Ora Cook, Gault’s neighbor.
PHOENIX – One June day in 1964, Gerald Gault and a teenage friend made a bad decision. Cahill of Gila County Superior Court presided over the case in Globe, whose courthouse is pictured here, circa 1956. Gerald “Jerry” Gault was 15 when he was accused of making an obscene telephone call to a neighbor in June 1964.
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