Unlike the Fifth Amendment right to counsel, which attaches in the context of custodial interrogation, see Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966), the Sixth Amendment right to counsel entitles the accused to effective assistance of counsel at the "critical stages" of the criminal justice process, including during trial and during certain pretrial proceedings. (United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 224 (1967); United States v. Ash, 413 U.S. 300, 310 (1973) (certain pretrial proceedings "might appropriately be considered parts of the trial itself" when the defendant is "confronted, just as at trial, by the procedural system, or by his expert adversary, or by both.").) The Court in Wade recognized that certain pretrial proceedings may yield results that "settle the accused's fate and reduce the trial itself to a mere formality." (Wade, 388 U.S. at 224.) In a pre-Miranda case that the Court later limited to its own facts, the Court held that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel was violated when police arrested a suspect and, while refusing his requests to see his attorney and denying the attorney access to the suspect, arranged a confrontation between the suspect and his accuser. (See Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478 (1964).)
