What rights does a defendant have in a criminal case?

Under both the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution as applied to the states through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and article I, section 15 of the California Constitution, a defendant in a criminal case has a right to the assistance of counsel. This entitles a defendant not to some bare assistance but rather to effective assistance. Included in the right to effective assistance is a correlative right to representation that is free from conflicts of interest. The constitutional guaranty protects the defendant who retains his own counsel to the same degree and in the same manner as it protects the defendant for whom counsel is appointed, and recognizes no distinction between the two. Finally, this right is fundamental, being among those constitutional rights which are so basic to a fair trial that their infraction can never be treated as harmless error. (People v. Bonin (1989) 47 Cal.3d 808, 833-835, 254 Cal.Rptr. 298, 765 P.2d 460, cert. den. (1990) 494 U.S. 1039, 110 S.Ct. 1506, 108 L.Ed.2d 641.)