An Empty Home.

At about 6:00 P.M. on 8 June 1964, the mother of fifteen-year-old Jerry Gault returned from work to her home in Gila County, Arizona, where she learned from a neighbor that her son Jerry was in the custody of the local juvenile court for having made an obscene phone call. Jerry Gault had one previous brush with the law — he allegedly stole a baseball glove two years earlier. After a brief release to his parents, Jerry Gault was summoned to an informal hearing before a judge of the superior court, who had been designated to serve as juvenile court judge. At the hearing, the judge questioned Jerry and an official at the juvenile facility where he had been held. It appeared that Jerry had been arrested by a local sheriff's deputy for making an obscene phone call to a neighbor, a Mrs. Cook...