Gideon v. Wainwright

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

The factual background of Gideon v. Wainwright reads like a film script, and in fact, in 1980 the case was transformed into a made-for-television drama titled Gideon's Trumpet (the title borrowed from a 1964 book on the subject written by Anthony Lewis), starring Henry Fonda, José Ferrer, and John Houseman. Clarence Gideon, a semiliterate drifter with a history of petty crime, was picked up in Panama City, Florida, on the morning of June 4, 1961, on suspicion of burglary. The night before, a nearby pool hall had been broken into and robbed. A witness reported having seen Gideon in the pool room around 5:30 the next morning.

Gideon was indigent, but when he asked that the trial court assign him an attorney, his request was rejected. The Sixth Amendment requires that all indigent defendants being tried in federal courts be assigned a legal representative, but at the time state courts were required to provide lawyers only for defendants accused of capital crimes. Gideon was obliged to defend himself, and, not surprisingly, he performed poorly. Found guilty of the felony of breaking and entering, he was sentenced to serve five years in prison. While there, Gideon began to study law, and his study led him to believe that he had a right to petition the Florida Supreme Court for review of his case under a writ of habeas corpus, arguing that because he had been denied counsel, he had been illegally imprisoned. The Florida Supreme Court rejected Gideon's petition, after which Gideon drafted a handwritten petition for a writ of certiorari and forwarded it to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the highest court in the land to review his case. The Court granted Gideon's wish—and even assigned him a lawyer, the future justice Abe Fortas.

The question before the Court in Gideon v. Wainwright (at the time, Louie L. Wainwright was secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections) was whether to uphold its own precedent, Betts v. Brady (1942), wherein the Court had found that the Fourteenth Amendment did not make the Sixth Amendment right to counsel applicable to all state criminal proceedings. Justice Black had written a dissent for the minority in that case, and now, in Gideon, he had the opportunity to right what he clearly thought a wrong—and in so doing to write the opinion for a unanimous Court. Black, an advocate of what came to be known as the total incorporation theory, believed that the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment had intended their work to incorporate all of the protections in the Bill of Rights, thus making the first eight amendments applicable at the state level. After reviewing those aspects of the Bill of Rights that the Court had already applied to the states, Black says that in Gideon the Court takes at face value the Betts assumption that, owing to the Fourteenth Amendment, state courts must observe any provision of the Bill of Rights that is “fundamental and essential to a fair trial.” Unlike the Betts Court, however, the Gideon Court believes that the guarantee of counsel is a fundamental right. Black finds plenty of support for this proposition in other Court opinions, making the case that Betts is an anomaly that must be overturned.

Gideon contributed mightily to the due process revolution expanding individual rights. The public defender program was greatly expanded nationwide. The Court, in turn, expanded Gideon in Argersinger v. Hamlin (1972), making the right to counsel applicable to misdemeanor defendants facing the prospect of incarceration. Before long, the right to counsel was being read to imply a right to effective counsel. Still other cases drew on Gideon when addressing the issue of when in the course of legal proceedings a lawyer must be assigned. More recently, legal associations have been urging courts to assign attorneys to impoverished litigants pursuing civil actions concerning such matters as housing, health care, and child care.