664
Opinion of the Court
cause it was used to enhance the length of imprisonment that followed a separate and subsequent felony proceeding. Just so here, amicus contends: Shelton had no right to appointed counsel in the Circuit Court because he was not incarcerated immediately after trial; his conviction and suspended sentence were thus valid and could serve as proper predicates for actual imprisonment at a later hearing to revoke his probation. See Fried Brief 14, 23-24.
Gagnon and Nichols do not stand for the broad proposition amicus would extract from them. The dispositive factor in those cases was not whether incarceration occurred immediately or only after some delay. Rather, the critical point was that the defendant had a recognized right to counsel when adjudicated guilty of the felony offense for which he was imprisoned. See Nichols, 511 U. S., at 743, n. 9 (absent waiver, right to appointed counsel in felony cases is absolute). Unlike this case, in which revocation of probation would trigger a prison term imposed for a misdemeanor of which Shelton was found guilty without the aid of counsel, the sentences imposed in Nichols and Gagnon were for felony convictions—a federal drug conviction in Nichols, and a state armed robbery conviction in Gagnon—for which the right to counsel is unquestioned. See Nichols, 511 U. S., at 747 (relevant sentencing provisions punished only "the last offense committed by the defendant," and did not constitute or "change the penalty imposed for the earlier" uncounseled misdemeanor); Gagnon, 411 U. S., at 789 (distinguishing "the right of an accused to counsel in a criminal prosecution" from "the more limited due process right of one who is a probationer or parolee only because he has been convicted of a crime").
Thus, neither Nichols nor Gagnon altered or diminished Argersinger's command that "no person may be imprisoned for any offense . . . unless he was represented by counsel at his trial," 407 U. S., at 37 (emphasis added). Far from
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