Gideon's Case
Clarence Earl Gideon was a drifter convicted of petty theft from a pool hall; at the trial he was denied a lawyer. His appeal to the Supreme Court was accepted, and the decision ordered that lawyers be provided in all criminal cases. Gideon's conviction was not overturned, but he was to be tried again.
Turner was Gideon's lawyer in this second trial. By destroying the credibility of the prosecution's key witness through exposing contradictions with other eyewitnesses and the witness's self-admittedly false statements (such as about his prior criminal record), Turner won an acquittal for Gideon.
Read more about this topic: W. Fred Turner
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“If someone does something we disapprove of, we regard him as bad if we believe we can deter him from persisting in his conduct, but we regard him as mad if we believe we cannot. In either case, the crucial issue is our control of the other: the more we lose control over him, and the more he assumes control over himself, the more, in case of conflict, we are likely to consider him mad rather than just bad.”
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