In Kirby v. Illinois (1972) 406 U.S. 682, the court wrote that the right to counsel is "historically and rationally applicable only after the onset of formal prosecutorial proceedings." Elsewhere the court said that the right "attaches only at or after the time that adversary judicial proceedings have been initiated against" the defendant. (Id. at p. 688.) "The initiation of judicial criminal proceedings," the court elaborated, "is far from a mere formalism. It is the starting point of our whole system of adversary criminal justice. For it is only then that the government has committed itself to prosecute, and only then that the adverse positions of government and defendant have solidified. It is then that a defendant finds himself faced with the prosecutorial forces of organized society, and immersed in the intricacies of substantive and procedural criminal law. It is this point, therefore, that marks the commencement of the 'criminal prosecutions' to which alone the explicit guarantees of the Sixth Amendment are applicable. " (Id. at pp. 689-690.)