Reading Number 47

From Gideon’s Trumpet

by Anthony Lewis

p. 317, ¶ 1– “In the morning mail of January 8, 1962, the Supreme Court of the United States received
a large envelope from Clarence Earl Gideon, prisoner No. 003826, Florida State Prison...”

Ibid., ¶ 2–“... A federal statute permits persons to proceed in any federal court in forma pauperis, in
the manner of a pauper, without following the usual forms or paying the regular costs.”

p. 318, ¶ 3– “Gideon was a fifty-one-year old white man who had been in and out of prisons much of
his life.”

Ibid., ¶ 4– “And yet a flame still burned in Clarence Earl Gideon. He had not given up caring about
life or freedom; he had not lost his sense of injustice.”

p. 319, ¶ 1– “He had been convicted of breaking into the Bay Harbor Poolroom in Panama City,
Florida. Gideon said his conviction violated the due-process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of
the Constitution, which provides that ‘No state shall... deprive any person of life, liberty or property,
without due process of law.’”

Ibid., ¶ 3– “Five more times in the succeeding pages of his penciled petition Gideon spoke of the right
to consul. To try a poor man for a felony without giving him a lawyer, he said, was to deprive him of
due process of law.”

p. 320, ¶ 6– “In the Circuit Court of Bay County, Florida, Clarence Earl Gideon had been unable to
obtain counsel, but there was no doubt that he could have a lawyer in the Supreme Court of the United
States now that it had agreed to hear his case.”

p. 321, ¶ 3– “The motion for appointment of cousel is granted and it is ordered that Abe Fortas,
Esquire, of Washington, D.C., a member of the Bar of this Court, and he is hereby, appointed to serve
as counsel for petitioner in this case.”

p. 324, ¶ 7– “Then... it was Justice Black’s turn. He looked at his wife, who was sitting in the box
reserved for the justices’ friends and families, and said: ‘I have for announcement the opinion and
judgement of the Court in Number One fifty-five, Gideon against Wainwright.”

p. 325, ¶ 2– “‘It raised a fundamental question,’ Justice Black said, ‘the rightness of a case we decided
twenty-one years ago, Betts against Brady. When we granted certiorari in this case, we asked the
lawyers on both sides to argue to us whether we should reconsider that case. We do reconsider Betts
and Brady, and we reach an opposite conclusion.”

p. 326, ¶ 5– “After nearly two years in a state penitentiary Gideon was a free man...”