Facts and Prior History
Between midnight and 8:00 a.m. on June 3, 1961, a burglary occurred at the Bay Harbor Pool Room in Panama City, Florida. Someone broke a door, smashed the cigarette machine and a record player, and stole money from a register. Later that day, a witness reported that he had seen Clarence Earl Gideon in the poolroom at around 5:30 that morning leaving with a wine bottle and money in his pockets. Based on this accusation alone, the police arrested him and charged him with breaking and entering with intent to commit petty larceny.
Gideon appeared in court and was too poor to afford counsel, whereupon the following conversation took place:
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.
GIDEON: The United States Supreme Court says I am entitled to be represented by Counsel.
Gideon was forced, therefore, to act as his own counsel and conduct a defense of himself in court, emphasizing his innocence in the case. Nevertheless, the jury returned a guilty verdict, sentencing him to serve five years in the state prison.
From his prison cell at Florida State Prison, making use of the prison library and writing in pencil on prison stationery, Gideon appealed to the Supreme Court in a suit against the Secretary to the Florida Department of Corrections, H.G. Cochran (who later retired and was replaced with Louie L. Wainwright). He argued that he had been denied counsel and, therefore, his Sixth Amendment rights, as applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, had been violated.
The court assigned him a prominent Washington, D.C. attorney, Abe Fortas of the law firm Arnold Fortas & Porter, a future Supreme Court justice. Bruce Jacob argued the case for respondents.
Read more about this topic: Gideon V. Wainwright
Famous quotes containing the words facts, prior and/or history:
“All the facts of nature are nouns of the intellect, and make the grammar of the eternal language. Every word has a double, treble or centuple use and meaning.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“As humans have a prior right to existence over dogs by virtue of being more highly evolved and having a superior consciousness, so women have a prior right to existence over men. The elimination of any male is, therefore, a righteous and good act, an act highly beneficial to women as well as an act of mercy.”
—Valerie Solanas (b. 1940)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)