Cite as: 511 U. S. 485 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
cases, of little avail if it did not comprehend the right to be heard by counsel." Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 68-69 (1932).
Following our decision in Gideon, the Court decided Burgett v. Texas, supra. There the defendant was charged under a Texas recidivist statute with having been the subject of four previous felony convictions. 389 U. S., at 111. The prosecutor introduced certified records of one of the defendant's earlier convictions in Tennessee. Id., at 112. The defendant objected to the admission of this conviction on the ground that he had not been represented by counsel and had not waived his right to counsel, but his objection was overruled by the trial court. Id., at 113. This Court reversed, finding that the certified records of the Tennessee conviction on their face raised a "presumption that petitioner was denied his right to counsel . . . , and therefore that his conviction was void." Id., at 114. The Court held that the admission of a prior criminal conviction that is constitutionally infirm under the standards of Gideon is inherently prejudicial and to permit use of such a tainted prior conviction for sentence enhancement would undermine the principle of Gideon. 389 U. S., at 115.
A similar situation arose in Tucker, supra. The defendant had been convicted of bank robbery in California in 1953. At sentencing, the District Court conducted an inquiry into the defendant's background, and, the record shows, gave explicit attention to the three previous felony convictions that the defendant had acknowledged at trial. The District Court sentenced him to 25 years in prison—the stiffest term authorized by the applicable federal statute, 18 U. S. C. § 2113(d). 404 U. S., at 444. Several years later, after having obtained a judicial determination that two of his prior convictions were constitutionally invalid, the defendant filed a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court in which he had been convicted of bank robbery. He challenged the use at
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