The landmark Supreme Court Case, Gideon v Wainwright, turned Clarence Earl Gideon from a career criminal to the nation’s hero overnight. Through his case, Gideon gave everyone in the US the right to a free public defender. Yet, 50 years later, the case does not seem to fulfil all of its promises. While Gideon v. Wainwright gave everyone the right to appointed counsel, it did not succeed in giving indigent defendants a fair trial due to limited funding and overworked public defenders, often resulting in the unfair due process of law for indigent defendants. Clarence Earl Gideon’s difficult life led him to victory in a landmark United States Supreme Court case. After dropping out of school, he lived as a drifter and found himself in and out …show more content…
Despite this, he proceeded as his own lawyer because he could not afford one. "[Gideon] made an opening statement to the jury, cross-examined the prosecution's witnesses, presented witnesses in his own defense, declined to testify himself, and made arguments emphasizing his innocence." Despite his efforts, Gideon was still sentenced to five years in prison for his crime. During his time in the Bay Circuit County Court jail he filed a habeas corpus, to the Florida Supreme Court, to prove he was unlawfully imprisoned because he had no lawyer. The Florida Supreme Court denied his petition. So instead, he wrote to the United States Supreme Court in January of 1962. His letter, one of the many thousands of letters asking the Supreme Court to hear a case, would be one of the 80 to 100 cases selected by the Supreme Court that year. Gideon’s letter sat at the bottom of a large stack, but “the court agreed to hear [Gideon’s] case to resolve the question of whether the right to counsel guaranteed under the 6th Amendment of the Constitution applies to defendants in state court.” Gideon won in a unanimous 9-0 decision by the Supreme Court on March 18, 1963. The decision was delivered by Justice Hugo L Black who said, “… lawyers in criminal courts are necessities, not luxuries.” He made it clear no