Appendix: Request for Counsel
Before the trial began, Gideon requested counsel. The Court's denial was the basis of his petition to the Supreme Court.
Court: What says the defendant? Are you ready to go to trial? As Anthony Lewis writes in Gideon's Trumpet: Gideon was wrong, of course. The United States Supreme Court had not said he was entitled to counsel; in Betts v. Brady and succeeding cases it had said quite the opposite. But that did not necessarily make Gideon's petition futile, for the Supreme Court never speaks with absolute finality when it interprets the Constitution. . . . Although he did not know it, Clarence Earl Gideon was calling for one of those great occasions in legal history. He was asking the Supreme Court to change its mind. |
"I request this Court to appoint Counsel to represent me in this trial." -Clarence Earl Gideon [1] |
- 1. State v. Gideon, in National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, "Gideon 50th Anniversary," Foundation for Criminal Justice, last modified July 27, 2012.
- 2. Ibid.
- 3. Gideon's Trumpet: The Poor Man and the Law, narrated by Martin Agronsky, CBS, 1964.
- 4. Anthony Lewis, Gideon's Trumpet (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), 10.
- 5. Gideon's Trumpet: The Poor Man.