Gideon Lawsuit Defense

Gideon V. Wainwright 372 U.S. 335, 83 S. Ct. 792, 9 L. Ed. 2d 799 (1963) is the case I have chose to brief. According to US courts website “Clarence Earl Gideon was an unlikely hero. He was a man with an eighth-grade education who ran away from home when he was in middle school. He spent much of his early adult life as a drifter, spending time in and out of prisons for nonviolent crimes. ”The Petitioner within the case was Clarence Earl Gideon.

Prior to the case of Gideon v. Wainwright, defendant Clarence Earl Gideon was charged with breaking and entering in the state of Florida. This crime is a felony according to Florida state law. Unable to pay for defense counsel, Gideon requested that the court grant him one for free. The court denied Gideon his request of being granted defense counsel. The court stated, “Under the laws of the State of Florida, the only time the Court can appoint Counsel to represent a Defendant is when that person charged with a capital offense.”

This posed two main Constitutional questions: Do non-capital felony defendants still get the sixth amendment?s right to counsel in state courts? Should all states have to provide counsel in their courts for indigent defendants just as federal courts do, no matter what type of case it may be? (Street Law, 2012) The case of Gideon v. Wainwright helped bring into light and define the full rights of the accused. Through dealing with the sixth amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, it focused on the key aspect of appointing counsel for any defendant, and made one way our country handles criminal justice synonymous between state and federal

On June 3, 1961, a man was accused of entering and breaking into a pool hall in Panama City, Florida. An owner of a pool hall saw that his window had been broken, some of his bottles were stolen, and that there was money missing from the machines. Clarence Earl Gideon, a poor man, was who was blamed for committing this crime. Gideon vs. Wainwright is the Supreme Court case. Gideon became arrested and became to find that his fifth, fourteenth, and sixth amendment rights were violated.

David Feige’s Indefensible: One Lawyer’s Journey nto the Inferno of American Justice invites people from all walks of life to a second hand experience of the criminal justice system hard at work. What is most interesting about Feige’s work is its distinct presentation of the life of a public defender in the South Bronx. Instead of simply detailing out his experiences as a public defender, Feige takes it a step further and includes the experiences of his clients. Without the personal relationships that he carefully constructs with each of his defendants, Feige would not be able to argue that the criminal justice system is flimsy at best, decisions always riding on either the judge’s personal attitudes or the clients propensity towards plea bargaining.

This year at Elon University, all first-year students were given a summer reading. The author Bryan Stevenson, a gifted attorney, who founded the Equal Justice Initiative; fights to raise awareness about the injustices in the United States legal and social systems. Just Mercy, his book magnifies his early career, where he fought for people on death row. This book talks about the injustices that happened back in the 80’s and 90’s but, these same injustices by the police are still around today, but justified by law now.

This paper provides a critical response analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the author, Deborah Rhode’s, position in her article, Access To Justice. Accordingly, this exploration yields an evaluation through consideration of key questions and concepts with correlations to various week three materials pertaining to punitive justice, hence, the passage selection choice for this analysis is “Defining the Goal: Access for Whom? For What? How Much? And Who Should Decide?”, which emphasizes the socioeconomic issue of inequality of justice through assertions that a disparate proportion of the United States population lacks access to adequate representation (Rhode, 2004, pp.

This means that those charged with lesser crimes are pushed to the back of their caseloads. Public defenders are overworked and underpaid meaning that many times they cannot do their job to the best of their abilities. Sadly because of this system, many of their clients sit in holding cells for months or years, awaiting for a trial that is continually pushed off by their attorney. While the system of free public defenders seemed like an equal foot for criminal clients to stand on in the justice system, it is in reality a very messy and disorganized system that overlooks those without the most pressing issue. Gideon V. Wainright was a landmark case, arguably one of the most important cases of the sixties.

Clarence Earl Gideon was not someone you would expect to be a hero. According to www.uscourts.gov, he left school after the 8th grade and decided to run away from home. “He was mostly a drifter, spending time in and out of prison for nonviolent crimes,” their website reads. When he was 51 years old, he was accused of breaking into a bar in Florida and arrested. He was too poor to afford a lawyer, so when he got to court, he asked the judge to appoint him one, according to his rights under the Sixth Amendment.

By the 1980’s membership represented only 20% of the labor force, and today just 7.8%. An imminent Supreme Court Ruling on the case of Freidrichs v California further threatens Union stability. In this case the court is being asked to determine the justness of forcing employees to contribute financially to unions which in turn spends their money lobbying for political agendas that benefit the union. According to The Center for Responsive Politics, eight of the top ten all-time political contributors are labor unions. Which is concerning in and of itself.

Kasey Sammis Case: Gideon v Wainright, 1963 Facts: Clarence Earl Gideon and Louie Lee Wainright, Secretary of the Florida Division of Corrections. Gideon was charged breaking and entering and intent to commit petty larceny in Florida state court. He appeared before the state Court, informing the Court he was too poor to afford representation and requested that the Court appoint him an attorney. The Court declined to appoint Gideon an attorney, stating that under Florida law, the only time an indigent defendant is entitled to appointed counsel is when he is charged with a capital offense. Gideon was forced to represent himself and with no knowledge of doing so, was found guilty anc sentenced to serve five years in prison.

Part diary, for much-required change to the American criminal equity framework, Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy is a disastrous and uplifting invitation to battle composed by the lobbyist attorney who established the Equal Justice Initiative, an Alabama-based association in charge of liberating or diminishing the sentences of scores of wrongfully indicted people. Stevenson's diary weaves together individual stories from his years as a legal advisor into a solid explanation against racial and lawful bad form, drawing a reasonable through line from subjugation and its inheritance to the present still-biased criminal equity framework. Between the 1970s and 2014, when Stevenson's journal was distributed, the U.S. jail populace expanded from 300,000

This paper is to help show how sometimes judges can be Bias or inherent in the amount of bail set and other restrictions for pre-trial release while showing the concept of bail what can be done to prevent arbitrary and potentially prejudiced decisions from being made in the courtroom when it comes to bail by the judge, Also discuss the pros and cons of private vs. public defense. Introduction This paper will show the pros and cons of pre-release and define pre-trail release and bond, arbitrary. bond types also look into the factors of bail amounts a judge looks at to determine how much the defendant’s bail is and a few ways to prevent arbitrary and potentially Prejudice decisions from being made in the court by judges.

Bernice Villarino Mrs. Ying Eng H 9 Period 1 1 May 2023 Just Mercy & TKAM essay Prompt #3: To Kill a Mockingbird and Just Mercy both suggest that the legal system can be an agent of both justice and injustice. Compare and contrast the ways in which the legal system is portrayed in each book. What factors contribute to its successes and failures?

Employee Welfare Unions have successfully fought for better terms and conditions for workers. They represent workers’ interests and have secured a variety of benefits, such as higher wages for unionized employees, work-life balance characterized by reasonable work schedules, job security and protection from arbitrary action by employers. In a September 2012 essay on the CNN website, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile asserted that is also due in part to union activity