gideon Essay -- essays papers

gideonGideon v. Wainwright What most people dont know is that in the retiring(a) those arrested for a crime did not really have the right to an attorney unless they had capital. This became a right because Clarence Gideon, a prison inmate who did not have the money for a lawyer, took a pencil in his hand and wrote his own petition to the United States Supreme Court. Clarence Gideon, without a lawyer, took his case to the highest court in the country and won important rights for all of us. In 1961, Clarence Gideon was arrested in Florida on a charge of breaking and entering into a pool hall. Gideon was a likely suspect for the patrol to arrest he was a 51-year old drifter who had been in and out of jail many times since he ran away from home to be a hobo at age 16. Although he barely finished the eighth-grade, when Gideon was arrested he knew two things one of which was that he had not committed this crime and the second is he would not have a chance to convince a jury that he was not guilty if he did not have a lawyer. Because Gideon could not afford a lawyer, he asked a judge to appoint a lawyer to represent him. The judge refused and Gideon was convicted. He was sentenced to five years in jail, which gave him a lot of time on his hands. He put that time to good use. First, he filed a petition before the Florida Supreme Court. The petition was denied. So thence he decided to file a petition in the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that putting him on trial without a lawyer was...