ESCOBEDO V. ILLINOIS (1964)

In Escobedo v. Illinois, the ACLU of Illinois brought suit on behalf of a man convicted of murder largely based on a statement he made alone while subjected to police questioning. Although the lower courts dealt with the case primarily in terms of settled Fifth Amendment tests of voluntariness, the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Arthur Goldberg, chose instead for the first time to extend Sixth Amendment “assistance of counsel” protections to an accused person under police interrogation. This 5–4 split decision built on Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) to make such statements inadmissible due to denial of attorney assistance, a principle that was later advanced by Miranda v. Arizona (1966).