The Case That Changed American LawThe Gideon v. Wainwright case was one of the most important events the history of the American legal system. It guarantees that everyone has the right to an attorney, not just those who can afford it. This gave states the responsibility to pay for public defenders, a system which has enabled thousands of falsely accused defendants to regain freedom. Clarence Earl Gideon was an ordinary Florida man accused of breaking into a Panama City poolroom in 1961 with intent to commit petit larceny, a felony charge. Lacking the money to afford an attorney, he unsuccessfully requested counsel from the Court. Gideon served as his own attorney, but with only an eighth-grade education and no legal training, Gideon had no chance against the prosecutor and was convicted.
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"A man with money can hire a lawyer to represent him. He'd get a better chance in a trial than I would get without an attorney. To me, that was just common sense; there was no argument to it." -Clarence Earl Gideon [3] a lawyer or team of attorneys representing one side
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Background: Gideon's TrialJustice Hugo Black summarizes the trial in the Majority Opinion:
Put to trial before a jury, Gideon conducted his defense about as well as could be expected from a layman. He made an opening statement to the jury, cross-examined the State's witnesses, presented witnesses in his own defense, declined to testify himself, and made a short argument "emphasizing his innocence to the charge contained in the Information filed in this case." The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and petitioner was sentenced to serve five years in the state prison. [4]
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- 1. Defending Gideon, directed by Rebecca Richman Cohen, New Media Advocacy Project, 2013.
- 2. Woody Wisner, Portrait of Clarence Earl Gideon, photograph, 1961, Florida Memory, State Archives of Florida, Tallahassee, FL.
- 3. Gideon's Trumpet: The Poor Man and the Law, narrated by Martin Agronsky, CBS, 1964.
- 4. Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (Mar. 18, 1963).
- 5. Bay Harbor Poolroom, photograph, Jack Blackman, March 18, 2013.
- 6. Gideon's Trumpet: The Poor Man.
- 7. Karen Houppert, Chasing Gideon: The Elusive Quest for Poor People's Justice (New York: New Press, 2013).
- 8. Gideon's Trumpet, directed by Robert L. Collins, Worldvision, 1980.
- 9. National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, "Gideon 50th Anniversary," Foundation for Criminal Justice, last modified July 27, 2012.
- 10. Key Constitutional Concepts, produced by Robe Imbriano, PJ Productions, 2006.
- 11. Nathan Morse, The Poolroom Site Today, photograph, December 2013.
- 8. Ahilan Arulanantham and Lucas Guttentag, "Extending the Promise of Gideon: Immigration, Deportation, and the Right to Counsel," Human Rights 39, no. 4 (April 2013).