faintly by the
older decisions, that the Fourteenth Amendment "incorporates the
specific guarantees found in the Sixth Amendment, although it
recognized that a denial of the rights stipulated in the latter
Amendment may in a given case amount to a deprivation of due
process."[827]

Having thus construed the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
as not inclusive of the Sixth Amendment and as requiring no more than a
fair trial which, on occasion, may necessitate the protection of
counsel, the Court, in succeeding decisions rendered during the
interval, 1942-1946, proceeded to subject Betts _v._ Brady to the
"silent treatment." In Williams _v._ Kaiser[828] and Tomkins _v._
Missouri[829] two defendants pleaded guilty without counsel to the
commission in Missouri of capital offenses, one, to robbery with a
deadly weapon, and the second, to murder. Defendant, Williams contended
that, notwithstanding his request, the trial court did not appoint
counsel, whereas defendant, Tomkins alleged that he was ignorant of his
right to demand counsel under the Missouri statute. In ruling that the
defendants' petitions for _habeas corpus_ should not have been rejected
by Missouri courts without a hearing, the Supreme Court relied almost
entirely upon the quotations from Powell _v._ Alabama[830] previously
set forth herein; and reiterated that the right to counsel in felony
cases being protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, the failure of a
State court to appoint counsel is a denial of due process. "A layman,"
the Court added, "is usually no match for the skilled prosecutor whom he
confronts in the court room. He needs the aid of counsel lest he be the
victim of overzealous prosecutors, of the law's complexity, or of his
own ignorance or bewilderment."[831]

Nor was Betts _v._ Brady mentioned in the following pertinent decisions.
In House _v._ Mayo,[832] the Supreme Court held that the action of a
trial court in compelling a defendant to plead to an information
charging burglary without opportunity to consult with his counsel is a
denial of the constitutional right to counsel; and in Hawk _v._
Olson[833] the Court repeated this assertion, in connection with the
denial to a defendant accused of a murder of the same opportunity during
the critical period between his arraignment and the impaneling of the
jury. Both these opinions cited with approval the two previously
discussed Williams and Tomkins Cases; and in House _v._ Mayo the