YOUNG Gerald Gault may have thought it was just a joke. He telephoned a housewife who lived near by in Globe, Ariz., and made what the Supreme Court subsequently called "remarks or questions of the irritatingly offensive, adolescent sex variety." The boy had no lawyer, the housewife never publicly testified, no hearing transcript was kept and no appeal was possible. It took a writ of habeas corpus to get a review of the case. Gault could have received a maximum jail term of two months if he had been an adult; since he was...
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