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I am not an attorney (nor do I play one on TV) and so this is not going to be a detailed analysis with LexisNexis citations, etc. Instead, this is simply a layman's recounting of one of the most famous US Supreme Court decisions that first caught my attention as a child - and is one of the most easy to understand, some 50 years after the story began in June, 1961 and ended in March, 1963.
In junior high school, one social studies class of mine (circa 1968-69) I had looked at several famous Supreme Court cases, and we had to write a short paper about one of them. This was before Roe Vs. Wade, and so Brown vs. Board of Ed was the most well-known one. I had seen on TV a short newsclip featuring an elderly man saying in a Southern drawl that "I did not get a fair trial" and found that Gideon vs. Wainwright represented a concept even a young punk like me could understand: having a lawyer to defend you. It turned out there was a book on the subject, but too advanced for a 12-13 year-old, and so my paper was undoubtedly perfunctory. Yet it stayed in my mind, and when I re-visited the subject as an adult ... well, if you're unfamiliar with the case, I think you'll find it as fascinating as I did.
For more than a dozen years after his death in 1972, Clarence Earl Gideon lay buried in a nondescript, unmarked grave in Hannibal, Missouri where he had been born in 1910. Not surprising: since for much of his life he had been what you'd call a ne'er-do-well or a drifter, after running away from home in the eighth grade. Married four times, he later had children taken away by welfare authorities and - while never becoming a violent criminal - had certainly racked-up jail time for petty burglaries, rarely able to hold a job for long in Missouri and Texas. And perhaps he was such an easy target that - after having moved to Florida in 1959 - it was he who was identified as having been the person who in 1961 had broken-in to a billiards hall in Panama City and stolen money from the cash register.
At his trial, he asked to have counsel appointed for him. And while different US states at the time had different standards for when public defenders were appointed, Florida (like many others) only provided for a court-appointed attorney for a capital offense - when someone was on trial for their lives:
The COURT: Mr. Gideon, I am sorry, but I cannot appoint Counsel to represent you in this case. Under the laws of the State of Florida, the only time the Court can appoint Counsel to represent a Defendant is when that person is charged with a capital offense. I am sorry, but I will have to deny your request to appoint Counsel to defend you in this case.
You can imagine that an indigent, uneducated man wouldn't stand much of a chance acting as his own attorney against even a first-year law student - for example, the judge having to say, "No, Mr. Gideon, you can not ask a witness if he's ever been arrested - you can ask if he has been convicted of a crime" - and it took the jury less than an hour to convict Gideon and send him to jail. But Clarence Earl Gideon had not abandoned hope ..... and this is where his story really begins.
At this point, it might do well to note that this tale is being told from two sources - the first of which is the book I referred to before; written by the long-time New York Times reporter Anthony Lewis who wrote the book Gideon's Trumpet outlining the case. The title comes from the Old Testament passage Judges 6:34 in which Gideon leads deceives a larger army into believing his small force is much larger by the subterfuge of musical instruments ....
But the Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet
The second is a 1980 made-for-TV, Hallmark Hall of Fame movie similarly entitled Gideon's Trumpet - with Clarence Earl Gideon portrayed by Henry Fonda (who was seemingly born for these roles). Gideon spends much of his time at the prison library, researching the law and prior cases about the right to counsel. And at some point in his campaign - in pencil, and on prison stationery - he writes a petition to the US Supreme Court to hear his case. Below is the last page of his petition, at this link is a much neater version ... yet still replete with misspellings, etc.
At the time, the prevailing Supreme Court case was 1942's Betts vs. Brady which held that the Sixth Amendment's right to have counsel (and modified by the Fourteenth Amendment which made it applicable to the individual states) did not require public defendants except in 'major' cases. Although some states had established such protections (Connecticut did so in 1917), many states did not. It turns out that Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black - one of the dissenting votes in Betts - was eager to revisit the case, and he persuaded his skeptical fellow justices to accept this handwritten petition from Clarence Earl Gideon. And to represent Gideon, the court appointed the prominent Washington attorney Abe Fortas - who just a few years later became a Supreme Court justice, himself.
The case was named Gideon vs. Wainwright after Louie L. Wainwright who in 1962 had been named head of the Florida Department of Corrections - and he is still alive today at age 86, involved with criminal justice matters in retirement.
On January 15, 1963 the Supreme Court heard arguments from Abe Fortas (representing Gideon) and - on the other side - from Bruce Jacob who was an assistant Attorney General for the State of Florida. One knows that TV movies bend the truth, but after arguing that states could not be expected to pay for an attorney for every defendant, the movie portrayed him as having a deer-in-the-headlights look when one hardball question after another is thrown at him by the members of the Court. Bruce Jacob is also still alive, turning age 75 later this month and teaches law at Stetson University in Florida, where he graduated from its law school in 1960.
On March 18, 1963, the US Supreme Court handed down its decision, and the TV movie shows Henry Fonda (as Gideon) being summoned to the warden's office. When he emerges afterwards, his fellow inmates rush up to him to learn the result.
"Clarence, did you win?!?"
"Nine to nothing!" .... (to the sound of cheers).
But 'winning' only meant a new trial for Gideon; he was disappointed that he was not in the clear. And it had to be explained to him that 'double jeopardy' did not apply here; that it would be a 'do-over', instead. But this time, he was able to ask the court in his retrial to appoint Fred Turner as his counsel. And Turner was able to methodically pick apart the state's case; badly damaging the testimony of the prosecution's star witness Henry Cook - who identified Gideon as the culprit - to the point of suggesting it may have been the 22 year-old himself who committed the crime. (Fred Turner died in 2003 at age 81).
Once again, the jury took less than an hour to decide the fate of Clarence Earl Gideon .. but this time it was an acquittal, and Henry Fonda (as Gideon) walks away into the sunset as the movie ends. Later in 1963, the then-US Attorney General summed up the case thusly:
"If an obscure Florida convict named Clarence Earl Gideon had not sat down in prison with a pencil and paper to write a letter to the Supreme Court, and if the Supreme Court had not taken the trouble to look for merit in that one crude petition among all the bundles of mail it must receive every day, the vast machinery of American law would have gone on functioning undisturbed.
But Gideon did write that letter. The Court did look into his case and he was retried with the help of a competent defense counsel, found not guilty, and released from prison after two years of punishment for a crime he did not commit, and the whole course of American legal history has been changed."
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
November 11, 1963
To be sure (and I'm sure the attorneys out there can verify this) the well-being of each state's public defenders is never assured; budget cuts these days imperil our system. But when the forty-eighth anniversary of the Gideon vs. Wainwright decision comes up in two weeks, it's a decision we can all feel better about.
In 1984, nearly thirteen years after he was laid to rest in the unmarked grave in Hannibal, Missouri, the Eastern Missouri chapter of the ACLU placed a marker on Clarence Gideon’s grave. It may be, as some argue that he isn't truly a hero - regardless, his was a heroic act that is a cornerstone of our justice system today.
Now, on to Top Comments:
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From alizard:
In the diary by Badabing entitled I No Longer Hope For Audacity - an astute cumulo wrote about two elevators to hell: "The one marked 'R' is the Express ... but they are both going to the same place".
From benintn:
In the front-page story NATO forces slaughter nine Afghan boys - David Mizner has a remarkably pro-life, humane, and profound response to a comment about 'accidental deaths'.
From pixxer:
In the diary by roseeriter that reported that Gabrielle Giffords had progressed to the point that she was singing American Pie ... I got a kick out of this comment from Gooserock.
From Jan F:
From nelangst's great diary from Madison - in a thread filled with Badgers vowing to never give up - this comment by JVolvo made me laugh.
From Seneca Doane:
There's been lots of recent discussion - including this diary from Clarknt67 - on who deserves credit for the good results on DADT repeal. Who's right? I'd go with pico, whose nuanced and thoughtful perspective is well-developed and persuasive.
A pair from Dragon5616:
I got a chuckle out of this observation about wingnuts by trevzb in bernardpliers' first-time-on-DK4, top-o'-the-rec-list diary Wingnuts Freak Out As Cops Join WI Protests. (It's all downhill from here, pliers.)
JoesGarage really hit home with me and a lot of other teachers in his fabulous snark/rant True Confessions of a Good-for-Nothing Freeloader. And Tchrldy added this reminder in the comments.
And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening .... ....
In the diary by Meteor Blades about the infinite wisdom contained in the Green Book written by your-friend-and-mine in Libya ... there were a few comments of note, especially about his male-female observations.
For instance, blue aardvark goes to to opine that "Men are from Libya. Women are from Libya. But no one can explain why". vahana was relieved that - at a college bookstore - the only 'Green Books' for sale were "a new version of the old blue books for essay exams". And Rimjob wondered how this relates to the female guards the Libyan leader uses.
On a more serious note, Betty Pinson felt the observations on menstruation, et al were symptomatic of our own US political opponents - "Sexually repressed and fearful of women". And finally, while others compared them to various school boards, a gilas girl notes that Gaddafi has "an entire government at his disposal".
And lastly, we hope to resume Top Mojo just as soon as the gremlins figure out DK4.