Gideon Vs Wainwright Case Study

At first viewing of the documentary "Gideon's Army.' * you may become overwhelmed by the dire situation of the criminal justice system in the South, specifically with regard to the poorer and less educated population. To observe how stressed the public defenders are, how tapped the resources, and how desperate the defendants, you struggle with the notion that there may not be anything that can be done and it's too big a problem to overcome. But delving into the professional, and, at times, personal life of Travis Williams, a public defender in Georgia, you feel determination and hope. Williams advocates for each client with passion and diligence.

The trial court denied these motions and the statements were used at trial. The jury found petitioner guilty of murder and was sentence to a 24-year prison term. On appeal, Petitioner argued that he had not “knowingly and intelligently” waived his 6th amendment right to counsel before he gave his uncounseled post indictment

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.”

Clarence Earl Gideon was falsely accused of burglarizing a cigarette machine and jukebox inside a poolroom. When Gideon was sent to court to receive his sentence, he had no lawyer, therefore he had to defend himself. Despite his valiant efforts, Gideon was sent to 5 years in prison. While there, Gideon filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus hoping to challenge his conviction. His ability to file for a petition is a positive right, so even though he was not given a lawyer, despite his need and right to one, some of his positive rights—filing a petition—were still upheld.

The Sixth Amendment gives defendants the right to counsel in federal prosecutions no matter what circumstance. In the first place, the florida state court should’ve granted gideon a lawyer when he requested since it was his rights as an individual the 6th amendment states, “the accused shall enjoy the right to (...) have the assistance of counsel for his defence,” (Amendment 6). This clearly points out that gideon  had the right to a lawyer when requested and when denied by the state court the supreme court was to correct it for he an individual has the same rights  as everyone else. Proving that the Supreme court sided to protect his individual right for it was violated.    Equally important, the reason for denial of a consuel was absolutely absurd.

But somehow, when I present this same basic belief in the context of a secular humanist thrust into the brutal world of criminal justice, it loses its coherence. (Feige 238) Feige cites the criminal justice environment as “brutal,” which has been demonstrated time and time again in the book. He sums up his argument by reminding his audience that there exists no relative glamour in being a public defender: “We public defenders are a strange breed: passionate people spending ourselves in a Sisyphean struggle for justice in a system rigged to crush us” (Feige 268). Exceptionally thankful, then, should all people be for public defenders who spend day in and day out consistently doomed to fail.

• The Constitution is weakened by the excessive use of plea-bargaining to avoid a trial. Research has shown that criminal defendants who exercise their Sixth Amendment right to trail by jury are more severely punished than those who accept plea bargains (Devers, 2011, p. 2). It is assumed that plea-bargaining weakens the criminal justice system by allowing violent criminals to plea out of serious charges and putting the disadvantaged and potentially innocent or partially innocent in a position where exercising their constitutional right to a trial by jury is too risky of an option. Prosecutors are required by the state to carry the burden and prosecute the accused.

The court refused, to which Gideon replied with the claim that the Supreme Court had ruled that all citizens being tried for a felony crime should have aid of counsel. The court ignored the defendants plea, and he was subsequently convicted. Gideon filed a habeas corpus petition to the Florida Supreme Court, which was also rejected. In Gideon's petition to the Supreme Court, found on page eight of the book, he claims that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, stating that, "[n]o state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," was violated when the trial court denied Gideon's request for an attorney (Lewis). Although Gideon mentioned a right to counsel roughly six times in his plea, he never mentioned Betts v. Brady (1942).

The history of the modern right to counsel for defendants who cannot afford to pay for counsel or lawyer goes back over a century ago; the Indiana Supreme Court in Webb v. Baird, 6 Ind. 13 (1853), officially recognized the right to counsel for a person accused of a crime. However, this decision was not based on constitutional or statutory law but warranted under “the principles of a civilized society.” Since the case of Webb v. Baird, the courts have immensely extended the right to counsel beyond just appointing an indigent person an attorney. For more than a hundred years, the Right to Counsel Clause was interpreted as simply granting the right to retain a private attorney to a defendant but didn’t mean that a poor criminal defendant had

Anthony Zurcher, an editor for “Echo Chamber” published in BBCNews, wrote the article “Affluenza Defense: Rich Privileged, and Unaccountable” in response to a Texas judge’s ruling on a controversial case. This case was about a 16-year-old boy, Ethan Couch, who drove with a “blood-alcohol level three times above the legal limit” (283), lost control of his pick-up truck and killed four pedestrians. Couch’s lawyers argued that he lacked a sense of responsibility because of his absent, wealthy parents and the lavish lifestyle he lived. This argument led the judge to sentence Couch to a drug rehabilitation center, paid for by his parents, and 10 years probation. There are many other cases similar to Couch’s where the perpetrator would receive a

Clarence Earl Gideon was an indigent living in Florida who was accused of breaking into the Bay Harbor Poolroom in Panama City, Florida with the intention to commit petty larceny. He had to represent himself at trial since he was poor and Florida did not provide state-funded attorneys for indigents. Once the case was taken up by the Supreme Court, it was affirmed by unanimous decision that anyone had a right to counsel. In Betts v. Brady which Gideon’s case overturned, Betts was an indigent accused of robbery who, when he asked for counsel at his trial, was denied. He later appealed his case up the court system and eventually to the Supreme Court on the grounds that, due to such actions, he had been held illegally.

Wainwright illustrated the importance of personal rights guaranteed by the constitution. This case began when Clarence Gideon was denied a court appointed lawyer to represent him in a petty crime case. Gideon, unable to afford his own lawyer, was unable to adequately defend himself and consequently was convicted. However, he was undeterred. Gideon then wrote a letter to the Supreme Court to overturn this conviction with the 6th Amendment as his evidence of the court’s misconduct.

I am here today to defend my client, Thomas Putnam, who has allegedly been sending his daughter, Ruth, out to falsely accuse neighbors of witchcraft. The reason, as declared by Giles Corey, is to buy off his convicted neighbor’s land in order to expand his estate. However, I am here to refute these inadequate claims with the clear and defined truth. Nevertheless, I will not claim that my client, Mr. Putnam, is a complete saint as he (and with numerous others) has his flaws. Yet, with Mr. Corey raising these erroneous claims, I will not stand here and let his faulty and inaccurate logic falsely persuade the jury.

The case of R v Caldwell was concerned with the law of recklessness and what equates to recklessness in certain circumstances. The defendant had appealed to the House of Lords for his conviction of aggravated criminal damage, however this conviction was maintained. Arising from this decision, ‘Caldwell recklessness’ was formed. This stated that a person is reckless where property is destroyed or damage where: the appellant partakes in an act which creates an apparent risk of destruction or damage of property, or when the appellant formulates an act in where they have not given any thought to the consequences of their act and has continued with the act regardless.