Pointer v. Texas

Two years ago in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, we held that the Fourteenth Amendment makes the Sixth Amendments guarantee of right to counsel obligatory upon the States. The question we find necessary to decide in this case is whether the Amendments guarantee of a defendants right "to be confronted with the witnesses against him," which has been held to include the right to cross-examine those witnesses, is also made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment.