Book Review: Gideon V. Wainwright Court Case

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Register to read the introduction… His triumph, ceaselessly setting up the right of the underprivileged to advocate in criminal act cases in America, was one of the milestone cases of the Warren Court. The book, Gideon’s Trumpet has been penned down by the author in order to call to mind the old times behind the Gideon v. Wainwright court case and the ways in which it made such an everlasting impact on the laws of the United States. This exceptional book scrutinizes the case Gideon v. Wainwright, the milestone 1963 Supreme Court case which detained that impoverished criminal defendants are unconstrained to legal advocates at the expense of the government. Gideon’s Trumpet is an articulate and edifying book which provides the reader with at the imperative tale which has never before occurred in the United States legal system. The book is recited with an adequate amount of side comments on the subject of the legal procedure and communal framework and it also proposes an extensive viewpoint of the ordinary people at the legal …show more content…
Gideon was tried and convicted by Judge Robert L McCrary, Jr. During this trial, Mr. Gideon didn’t have a counsel and was accused with burglary for breaking into a pool house in Panama City. Evidence, such as wine and loose change was found on Mr. Gideon. During this trial, Gideon actively seeked a counsel and asked the court on numerous occasions to provide him with a counsel. With each request, the court denied him the right to counsel. Thus, the case was extremely bias. Mr. Gideon had to represent himself against a state prosecutor. Gideon failed to understand the proper procedures in a law case and certain attorney techniques such as questioning the jury for bias opinions and asking relevant questions that lead to a point. Mr. Gideon simply asked questions that didn’t contain any lead and was shut down by the prosecutor. With the most unfavorable conditions, Clarence Earl Gideon was convicted and sentenced to five miserable years in …show more content…
Zerbst, the Supreme Court had held that defendants in federal courts had a right to counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. In Powell v. Alabama, the Court had held that state defendants in capital cases were entitled to counsel, even when they could not afford it; however, the right to an attorney in trials in the states was not yet obligatory in all cases as it was in federal courts under Johnson v. Zerbst. In Betts v. Brady, Betts was indicted for robbery and upon his request for counsel, the trial judge refused, forcing Betts to represent himself. He was convicted of robbery, a conviction he eventually appealed to the Supreme Court on the basis that he was being held unlawfully because he had been denied counsel. At the end of the book, Clarence Gideon was granted a new trial. This time when he appeared for trial in the Circuit Court of Bay County, Florida, Gideon had a lawyer, and the lawyer made a difference. The jury acquitted Gideon in his retrial showing, in just one person’s case, what we know to be true: The right to counsel has profound meaning in the lives of those who are

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