The right to due process is granted to every person including juveniles thanks to the Supreme Court reversing the conviction of Gerald Gault in May 1967 (Bartollas & Schmalleger, 2014, p. 355). This ruling from the Supreme Court essentially allowed the Fourteenth Amendment to include juveniles, not only encasing adults with the right to avoid arbitrary delinquency on behalf of the government. After all, who does not want to be treated fairly in the justice system when your life, liberty, or property is on the line.
Imagine being detained in a children’s detention home for making prank phone calls. That is what happened to Gerald Gault in June of 1964. Gerald Gault and Ronald Lewis, were alleged to have been making obscene phone calls to Gault’s…show more content… Courts). When the police arrived to arrest the fifteen-year-old boy they made no effort to get in contact with the child’s parents; it was not until Gault’s brother went looking for him did he find out from the Lewis family that he had been detained (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts). During the hours that the juvenile was taken into custody Gault was not advised of his rights to counsel, to remaining silent, or even the charges that he was being detained on (Bartollas & Schmalleger, 2014, p. 355). The arresting officer filed a petition the day of Gault’s initial court hearing, but the petition was not received by the Gault’s family until two months later (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts). Furthermore, Gault was never able to confront Mrs. Cook conflicting stories as she was never present at any of the court proceedings (Bartollas & Schmalleger, 2014, p. 355). Gault was committed to the state industrial school until his twenty-first birthday (Bartollas & Schmalleger, 2014, p. 355). The Arizona Superior Court and Arizona Supreme Court denied the request for an appeal at which time the United States Supreme Court was petitioned (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts) and rendered the decision that the Gault’s
