The Sixth Amendment protects the right to a lawyer, but the Supreme Court had also just recently made two landmark decisions about this right. In 1963, the Court ruled in "Gideon v. Wainwright", , that anyone being tried for a crime had the right to a lawyer. If the person could not pay for a lawyer, the state had to assign them a free lawyer. The next year, the Court ruled in another landmark case called "Escobedo v. Illinois", , that anyone suspected of a crime had the right to have a lawyer with them while the police questioned them.