Summary Of Gideon's Trumpet By Anthony Lewis

The book, Gideon's Trumpet, by Anthony Lewis was published in 1964 by Random

House Publishing in New York, NY. Anthony Lewis is a columnist for the New York Times. After covering the Supreme Court and the Justice Department as a member of the Times Washington Bureau, Mr. Lewis served as the Chief London Correspondent for the Times. Prior to these significant life achievements, Mr. Lewis won a Pulitzer Prize for national correspondence and the Heywood Broun Award while working for the Washington Daily News. Again, in 1963, Anthony Lewis won a second Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Supreme Court. During a four month newspaper strike between 1962 and 1963, Mr. Lewis was granted a great deal of time to write about one of, if not the most,

Wainwright. The content of Gideon's Trumpet consists of a break down of the process leading

up to and during Gideon v. Wainwright. Lewis shows in-depth aspects of the Supreme Court case such as the lower level cases and their holdings, court transcripts and dissents while summarizing and analyzing the entire case to the reader. Gideon was being charged with breaking and entering in Florida. While at the trial, Gideon requested that counsel be appointed to represent him in the

trial. 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). This was critical in Gideon's claim to the Supreme

These special circumstances may include things such as illiteracy, ignorance, youth, or mental illness, the complexity of the charge against him, or the conduct of the prosecutor or judge at the trial. Because of true determination and the intolerance of injustice, Gideon filed a writ of certiorari, requesting the US Supreme Court to review the constitutionality of Betts v. Brady in regards to the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, arguing that the absence of representation at his trial meant that he had been denied a fair trial, as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment. Gideon v. Wainwright made legal history, forever changing the interpretation of due process laid out in both the Sixth Amendment and the Fourteenth