Trials: And the Court Said unto Gideon

Every year the U.S. Supreme Court receives hundreds of petitions from prisoners asking to have their cases reviewed. Many are handwritten on prison stationery, some are barely legible, most have no legal merit. But every now and then, one leads to an important decision. This year a handwritten letter from a Florida prisoner named Clarence Earl Gideon brought about a ruling that changed judicial procedures in several states and caused countless new trials in Florida.

Gideon, now 52, already had a prison record when he was arrested in 1961, charged with breaking into a pool hall with intent to commit burglary. At his trial in a Florida state court, he asked the judge to appoint a lawyer to defend him. The judge denied the request, pointed out that under Florida law the court was required to appoint counsel only when a person was charged with a capital crime. Gideon conducted his own defense, was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. When the Supreme Court ruled on his petition last March, he had served 1½ years of his term.

Heavier Sentence. In his case, the Supreme Court confronted a familiar, vexing question that had concerned it many times. To what extent are the guarantees of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights made obligatory upon the states by the “due process” clause of the 14th Amendment, which says that no state may “deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law”? In 1942, in Belts v. Brady, the Supreme Court held that a defendant’s right to counsel in criminal prosecutions was not “fundamental,” and therefore did not fall within the scope of the clause. In short, said the court, a state did not have to furnish counsel for an indigent defendant. In ruling on Gideon’s appeal, the court briskly overturned the Betts decision, held that “in our adversary system of criminal justice, any person haled into court who is too poor to hire a lawyer cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him.”

Florida law officials, even those who felt that the decision was constitutionally sound, were dismayed by its practical consequences. Of the 8,000 prisoners in Florida penal institutions, 4,542 were convicted without benefit of counsel. Already more than 3,000 have petitioned for review of their convictions. Court calendars are jammed; distraught prosecutors are working overtime searching petitioners’ records and drawing up answering briefs; county budget directors are hunting desperately for funds to pay for retrials. The only hope for straightening things out, says the clerk of Escambia County’s court of records, is to give some “Gideonite” a new trial and reconvict him. “If we give him a heavier sentence than he got the first time, maybe that will serve as a lesson to the others.”

That lesson will not be easy to teach. In many cases where the courts have granted a new trial, it is virtually impossible for the prosecutor to rebuild the case—records and evidence are gone, witnesses have disappeared. Judge Joseph McNulty points to the pending case of a man sentenced to life imprisonment in 1938 for second-degree murder after being tried without a lawyer. “He’s pleading not guilty, and it will be impossible to try him. The witnesses are dead or gone, and I’m not sure they can even prove there was a corpse. They’ll probably have to let him go.”

Improving Justice. While the Gideon decision will undoubtedly lead to the freeing of many prisoners who were guilty as charged, it has also improved the processes of justice in new criminal cases in Florida. After the Supreme Court ruling, Florida speedily passed a public-defender law requiring courts to appoint counsel in criminal cases unless the defendant explicitly waives his right to counsel. And courts have begun to keep fuller, more careful records in all criminal prosecutions.

At the time of the Gideon decision, four states in addition to Florida—Alabama, Mississippi and the two Carolinas —had no laws requiring counsel for indigent defendants except in capital cases. Since then, the legislatures in Alabama and North Carolina have passed measures to provide counsel for lawyerless defendants in all felony cases. Mississippi courts have adopted a policy of appointing counsel for defendants charged with felonies, and South Carolina judges no longer permit defendants without counsel to plead guilty. In all four states, prisoners have petitioned for review of their cases.

And what of Clarence Gideon himself? He was retried in a state court, acquitted and freed. He is now living in Gainesville, Fla., lawfully employed as an electrician.