Griffin v. Illinois

351 U.S. 12 (1956)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Griffin and Crenshaw (Ds) were convicted of armed robbery and appealed. They asked for a certified copy of the court transcripts to be supplied to them for free as they were poor persons who had no means of paying the necessary required fees for such a transcript. The transcript was necessary for an appeal, and there was no dispute that Ds had no money to pay for the transcript. Their motion to supply the transcript was denied without a hearing. Ds then filed a petition under a Post-Conviction Hearing Act that did provide free transcripts but only for constitutional issues but not for alleged trial errors such as admissibility and sufficiency of evidence. Ds claimed a violation of equal protection and due process of law. The Illinois Supreme Court dismissed the petition. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.