During the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Legal Aid and Indigent Defendants held a series of public hearings to examine whether Gideon's promise is being kept. This comprehensive report represents the culmination of a painstaking analysis of hundreds of pages of testimony compiled from the hearings, leading to the inescapable conclusion that, forty years after Gideon, the promise of equal justice for the poor remains unfulfilled in this country.