Cite as: 535 U. S. 654 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
Appeals affirmed.1 That court initially held that an indigent defendant who receives a suspended prison sentence has a constitutional right to state-appointed counsel and remanded for a determination whether Shelton had "made a knowing, intelligent, and voluntary waiver of his right." App. 7. When the case returned from remand, however, the appeals court reversed course: A suspended sentence, the court concluded, does not trigger the Sixth Amendment right to appointed counsel unless there is "evidence in the record that the [defendant] has actually been deprived of liberty." Id., at 13. Because Shelton remained on probation, the court held that he had not been denied any Sixth Amendment right at trial. Id., at 14.
The Supreme Court of Alabama reversed the Court of Criminal Appeals in relevant part. Referring to this Court's decisions in Argersinger and Scott, the Alabama Supreme Court reasoned that a defendant may not be "sentenced to a term of imprisonment" absent provision of counsel. App. 37. In the Alabama high court's view, a suspended sentence constitutes a "term of imprisonment" within the meaning of Argersinger and Scott even though incarceration is not immediate or inevitable. And because the State is constitutionally barred from activating the conditional sentence, the Alabama court concluded, " 'the threat itself is hollow and should be considered a nullity.' " App. 37 (quoting United States v. Reilley, 948 F. 2d 648, 654 (CA10 1991)). Accordingly, the court affirmed Shelton's conviction and the monetary portion of his punishment, but invalidated "that aspect of his sentence imposing 30 days of
1 Shelton also appealed on a number of state-law grounds. The Court of Criminal Appeals rejected all but one of those challenges, concluding that most had been procedurally defaulted in the trial court. See App. 14-25. On one such challenge, the court remanded for further proceedings, id., at 23, but affirmed after the trial court ruled against Shelton on remand, id., at 29.
659
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