Gideon V. Wainwright Case Study

Did the state court's failure to appoint a lawyer for Gideon violate his right to a fair trial and due process of law as protected by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments?

Gideon v. Wainwright is a Supreme Court case that occurred in 1963 which questioned the defendant’s right of the sixth amendment. Clarence Gideon could not afford a lawyer, so under the 6th amendment he demonstrated his rights by asking the Florida Circuit Court judge to appoint one for him. His request was denied and he was left to represent himself (Lewis, 1964). He did an awful job of defending himself during the trial and was found guilty (PBS, 2006). He then wrote to the U.S. Supreme Court from his prison cell stating that his rights were violated. The Supreme Court agreed to hear his case.

Fortas’ main obstacle with the Gideon case was proving that counsel was necessary to Justices Frankfurter and Black who symbolically represented two differing judicial philosophies. Justice Frankfurter was often associated with the phrase “Judicial self restraint”. His ideology preferred judicial matters to be solved within congress and the states. Frankfurter believed that relying too much on judges would hinder the freedoms of the people and corrupt the nation’s concept of democracy. Justice John Marshall

Clarence Earl Gideon, a man with an 8th grade education who caused an influence from within a prison cell. Gideon has been in and out of jail numerous times for nonviolent crimes ever since fleeing from his home while he was in the 8th grade. He was charged with attempted misdemeanor, and was taken to court. He appeared without a lawyer, since he was not very wealthy at all. Infact, he was extremely poor. Gideon requested that he be given an attorney to defend him. According to the 6th Amendment, the accused has the right to a lawyer. However, the court of Florida denied him of it because they said that only citizens that have committed capital offenses have the right to jury. Gideon tried his best to represent himself without an attorney,

Mass Incarceration is a growing dilemma in the United States that populates our prisons at an alarming rate. Michelle Alexander is a professor at Ohio State University and a graduate of Stanford law school. She states in her award winning book, The new Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness “In less than thirty years, the U.S. penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million” (Alexander, 6). These young men and women are unable to afford a decent lawyer because they come from such a poverty-stricken background. Men and women are at a financial disadvantage in our justice system. Lawyers and attorneys cost a fortune and most people can just simply not afford them. Others plead to their charges because

In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled the Eighth Amendment prohibited citizens under the age of eighteen from being sentenced to life in prison without consideration of extenuating circumstances. In 1963, not even two weeks after his seventeenth birthday, Henry Montgomery murdered Charles Hurt and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Montgomery, now sixty-nine years old, is challenging the state of Louisiana’s authority to keep him behind bars. Should he, along with many others in the same situation, be given the chance to prove himself as an upstanding citizen of the United States of America? Montgomery’s and other prisoner’s freedom hangs in the balance as the nine justices of the Supreme Court debate whether or not they should be granted collateral review.

However the Florida Supreme Court denied the case. Gideon found relief from his conviction by filing a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the Florida Supreme Court. A writ of habeas corpus is a calling with the force of court. In his petition, Gideon challenged his conviction and said that the judge’s refusal to appoint an attorney violated his constitutional rights. However, the Florida Supreme Court still denied his petition. Gideon did not give up. He next filed a handwritten petition to send to the United States Supreme Court. The Court agreed to hear the case and resolve the question of whether the right to counsel or the right to an attorney is guaranteed under the Sixth Amendment and applies to defendants in state

In the United States, the adversarial system of justice relies on ensuring a criminal defendant receives a fair trial. The sixth amendment gives defendants the right to legal representation in criminal trials even if they cannot afford one themselves. Each city and county in the United States ensures a defendant the right to counsel. There are different ways cities and counties across the United States provide representation for indigent defendants. One such approach to indigent defense is public defender programs and is a popular system used by many states today. Public defender programs have been around since the 1900’s but gained popularity throughout the years due to the many indigent defense cases.

The United States Supreme Court’s decision in Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 required that state courts permit the defendant to seek the counsel of an attorney. The court’s decision in the Powell case required that free counsel be given to indigent defendants faced with serious federal offenses. It did not mandate that all indigent persons be given free counsel, only if it was thought that the trial verdict would be unfair without representation. It was not until Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U.S. 25 (1972) that the Supreme Court held indigent persons could not be imprisoned without the right to representative counsel. The Powell case enabled the Supreme Court’s decision to be used

There are two standards that must be proven; deficient performance by the attorney and resulting prejudice that if done differently would have proved a different outcome for the convicted. It is extremely problematic that defendants with the money to do so will achieve or exceed equality of representation with the State, while indigent defendants and those with modest means often will not. Your class should not determine the amount of fairness that you will receive during trial and ultimately your freedom. Gideon v. Wainwright made it unconstitutional to do this. but now we see problems with the system that was implemented to combat such unfairness in the justice system. The public defense system doesn’t guarantee that every time you have to utilize their services that you will get an attorney that will act in the best interest of you and this is a problem. There are people who are in jail or have a record because of the representation they were provided with by the State; this is not to shift all of the blame on the attorney because it is the system that needs fixing. When you have the means, you are at an advantage in the courtroom, and this is the exact opposite of the definition of “fair” and

Legal rights and protections are meaningless of those in need of the justice system cannot access it. “The myth of a single level playing field, however, ignores that the field is more level for some groups than for others – real-world inequities remain for racial and ethnic minorities – and implicitly legitimates hierarchies” (Daum & Ishiwata, 2010, p.844). Under the constitution the government is obligated to level the playing field for the historically disadvantaged groups by not abstracting them from their real-world circumstances. Thus creating the need for the government to provide publicly funded legal aid to address the financial and accessibility obstacles those living in poverty face. Although the right to access the justice system is formalized in the Charter providing formal

I feel like the courts have not gone far enough to provide representation for indigent defendants. Although the court will appoint counsel to a defendant, often times the attorney is not successful in helping their clients. Sometimes the attorney isn’t dedicated to their client’s case and they do not necessarily do all they can to help them. Due to the fact that a lot of these attorneys are overworked, they can’t possibly give the case the attention that it needs. To me this is unfair to the defendant because these things are out of their control and it should not affect their case. Courts should do more to motivate their attorneys to want to do a better job defending their clients. However, when a person commits a crime, they should be ready

They state that access to justice directs at the impeachments of barriers that confront people living in poverty from utilizing the legal system in the form of three “waves”. The first wave entailed the emergence of legal aid in the developed countries in the period after the Second World War. This wave intended to provide direct legal services to economically disadvantaged persons involved in the justice system. More recently, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers (Knaul, A/HRC/23/43, 15 March 2013) state that legal aid seeks to eradicate the barriers which impede access to justice by providing assistance to those who would not otherwise have been able to afford legal representation and access to the court system (Knaul, A/HRC/23/43, 15 March 2013, para. 27). To be more specific, the right to legal aid refers to both a right and an essential guarantee for the effective exercise of other human rights including the right to an effective remedy, the right to equality before the courts and tribunals, the right to counsel and the right to a fair trial (Knaul, A/HRC/23/43, 15 March 2013, para.

“Access to justice” refers to one’s ability to access the legal system to enforce one’s legal rights. Without access to the legal system, an individual’s legal rights are meaningless. The maldistribution of legal services has rendered “the ideal of equality before the law an empty promise.” Ensuring access to justice is cumbersome, as a constitutional right to legal counsel will impose a considerable “burden on taxpayers.” The Charter of Rights and Freedom (the “Charter”) guarantees the right to legal counsel for criminal matters. Conversely, right to civil legal aid only arises when “someone’s life, liberty, or security of the person is threatened by state action.” The state action requirement excludes all

At some point in your lives, all of you here are liable to wind up in a courthouse. Traffic ticket, wrongful accusations of robbery, assault, maybe even murder. Not all of you will be able to afford an attorney. But not to worry, ever since the Gideon vs. Wainwright decision, any person who cannot afford counsel is to be appointed public defense. So, unable to afford an attorney, your freedom and reputation will be in the hands of an underfunded, overworked public defense lawyer. But, as is stated on npr.org, “Sometimes people don 't get lawyers at all. Other times they get a lawyer who is so overworked and underpaid that there 's no way the accused can get a real defense.” Did I say not to worry? You should probably worry. Take Alan Crotzer, for example. Alan was accused of kidnapping and robbery. He was poor, indigent, without a single political connection, or dollar to his name. And he was innocent. The legal system failed Alan, who was unable to afford a decent attorney, and spent 24 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. After spending half his life in