critical stage
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 368 U.S. 52 - Hamilton v. Alabama · 1961Most cited · 2,582 citing opinions
Arraignment under Alabama law is a critical stage in a criminal proceeding. What happens there may affect the whole trial. Available defenses may be as irretrievably lost, if not then and there asserted, as they are when an accused represented by counsel waives a right for strategic purposes.
How often courts cite the cases defining “critical stage”
Court decisions citing the 2 opinions that defined “critical stage” — 4,573 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 2 definitions, chronological · 1961–1963
Whatever may be the normal function of the 'preliminary hearing' under Maryland law, it was in this case as 'critical' a stage as arraignment under Alabama law. For petitioner entered a plea before the magistrate and that plea was taken at a time when he had no counsel. Only the presence of counsel could have enabled this accused to know all the defenses available to him and to plead intelligently.