Cite as: 528 U. S. 259 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
the merit of that appeal. Whatever its strengths or weaknesses as a matter of policy, we cannot say that it fails to afford indigents the adequate and effective appellate review that the Fourteenth Amendment requires. A comparison of the Wende procedure to the procedures evaluated in our chief cases in this area makes this evident.
The Wende procedure is undoubtedly far better than those procedures we have found inadequate. Anders itself, in disapproving the former California procedure, chiefly relied on three precedents: Ellis v. United States, 356 U. S. 674 (1958) (per curiam), Eskridge v. Washington Bd. of Prison Terms and Paroles, 357 U. S. 214 (1958) (per curiam), and Lane v. Brown, 372 U. S. 477 (1963). See Anders, 386 U. S., at 741- 743. Although we did not, in Anders, explain in detail why the California procedure was inadequate under each of these precedents, our particularly heavy reliance on Ellis makes clear that a significant factor was that the old California procedure did not require either counsel or the court to determine that the appeal was frivolous; instead, the procedure required only that they determine that the defendant was unlikely to prevail on appeal. Compare Anders, supra, at 741-742 (" 'If counsel is convinced, after conscientious investigation, that the appeal is frivolous, of course, he may ask to withdraw . . . . If the court . . . agrees with counsel's evaluation of the case, then leave to withdraw may be allowed and leave to appeal may be denied' " (quoting Ellis, supra, at 675)), with Anders, supra, at 743 ("We cannot say that there was a finding of frivolity"). See also McCoy, supra, at 437 (quoting same passage from Ellis that we quoted in Anders). This problem also appears to have been one of the flaws in the procedures at issue in Eskridge and Lane. The former involved a finding only that there had been " 'no grave or prejudicial errors' " at trial, Anders, supra, at 742 (quoting Eskridge, supra, at 215), and the latter, a finding only that the appeal " 'would be unsuccessful,' " Anders, supra, at 743 (quoting Lane, supra, at 482). Wende,
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