of the court, and makes direct arguments to the court and jury seeking to persuade them of the 
defendant’s guilt. Under these circumstances “reason and reflection require us to recognize that in our 
adversary system of criminal justice, any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, 
cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him” (Citations omitted). 
By contrast, it is ordinarily the defendant, rather than the State, who initiates the appellate process, 
seeking not to fend off the efforts of the State’s prosecutor but rather to overturn a finding of guilt 
made by a judge or jury below. The defendant needs an attorney on appeal not as a shield to protect 
him against being “haled into court”  by the State and stripped of his presumption of innocence, but 
rather as a word to upset the prior determination of guilt. This difference is significant for, while no 
one would agree that the State may simply dispense with the trial stage of proceedings without a 
criminal defendant’s consent, it is clear that the State need not provide any appeal at all. The fact that 
an appeal has been provided does not automatically mean that a State then acts unfairly by refusing to 
provide counsel to indigent defendants at every stage of the way.   . . . (Citations omitted.) 
The facts show that respondent …  received the benefit of counsel in examining the record of his trial 
and in preparing an appellate brief on his behalf for the state Court of Appeals. Thus, prior to his seeking 
discretionary review in the State Supreme Court, his claims had “once been presented by a lawyer and 
passed upon by an appellate court.”  We do not believe that it can be said, therefore, that a defendant 
in respondent’s circumstances is denied meaningful access to the North Carolina Supreme Court simply 
because the State does not appoint counsel to aid him in seeking review in that court. At that stage, he will 
have, at the very least, a transcript or other record of trial proceedings, a brief on his behalf in the Court of 
Appeals setting forth his claims of error, and in many cases an opinion by the Court of Appeals disposing 
of his case. These materials . . .  would appear to provide the Supreme Court of North Carolina with an 
adequate basis for its decision to grant or deny review” (Citations omitted). 
This is not to say, of course, that a skilled lawyer, particularly one trained in the somewhat arcane art of 
preparing petitions for discretionary review, would not prove helpful to any litigant able to employ him. 
An indigent defendant seeking review in the Supreme Court of North Carolina is therefore somewhat 
handicapped in comparison with a wealthy defendant who has counsel assisting him in every conceivable 
manner at every stage in the proceeding. But both the opportunity to have counsel prepare an initial brief 
in the Court of Appeals and the nature of discretionary review in the Supreme Court of North Carolina 
make this relative handicap far less than the handicap borne by the indigent defendant denied counsel on 
his initial appeal as of right in Douglas. And the fact that a particular service might be of benefit to an 
indigent defendant does not mean that the service is constitutionally required. (Emphasis added). The duty 
of the State under our cases is not to duplicate the legal arsenal that may be privately retained by a criminal 
defendant in a continuing effort to reverse his conviction, but only to assure the indigent defendant an 
adequate opportunity to present his claims fairly in the context of the State’s appellate process. We think 
the respondent was given that opportunity under the existing North Carolina system.”  
10 
10. Ross v. Moffitt, 417 U.S. 600, 610-611, 614, 616 (1974). 
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