Griffin v. Illinois, 351 U.S. 12 (1956), was a case in which United States Supreme Court held that a criminal defendant may not be denied the right to appeal by inability to pay for a trial transcript.

Petitioners filed a motion in the trial court asking that in view of their inability to pay, a certified copy of the record, necessary for a complete bill of exceptions as required by Illinois law for a full appellate review, was to be furnished them without cost.

It was held that the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment were violated by the state's denial of appellate review solely on account of a defendant's inability to pay for a transcript.

Justice Felix Frankfurter, while concurring in the judgment and apparently also agreeing with the substantive holding, expressed the view that the court should not indulge in the fiction that the new rule announced by it has always been the law, and therefore those who did not avail themselves of it in the past waived their rights.

Burton, with Minton, Reed, and Harlan, dissented, holding that the Federal Constitution does not invalidate state appellate proceedings merely because a required transcript has not been provided without cost to an indigent litigant upon his request.