Gideon v. Wainwright
Four years after Gideon, in a case called Burget v. Texas, the Supreme Court ruled that the Gideon decision applied "retroactively." This means it applies even to defendants who were convicted before Gideon was decided in 1963. In other words, the Court was admitting that defendants should have had the right to counsel all along, even before Gideon. The Court decided in Gideon that people could not get a fair trial without lawyers; that was just as true for people who were convicted before 1963. These people, too, now deserved new trials, with free lawyers to help them.