Clarence Earl Gideon (August 30, 1910 – January 18, 1972) was a poor drifter accused in a Florida state court of felony breaking and entering. While in prison, he appealed his case to the US Supreme Court, resulting in the landmark 1963 decision Gideon v. Wainwright holding that a criminal defendant who cannot afford to hire a lawyer must be provided one at no cost.
At Gideon's first trial in August 1961, he was denied legal counsel and was forced to represent himself, and was convicted. After the Supreme Court ruled in Gideon that the state had to provide defense counsel in criminal cases at no cost to the indigent, Florida retried Gideon. At his second trial, which took place in August 1963, with a court-appointed lawyer representing him and bringing out for the jury the weaknesses in the prosecution's case, Gideon was acquitted.
Early life
Clarence Earl Gideon was born in Hannibal, Missouri. His father, Charles Roscoe Gideon, died when he was three. His mother, Virginia Gregory Gideon, married Marrion Anderson shortly after. Gideon, after years of defiant behavior and chronic truancy, quit school after eighth grade, aged 14, and ran away from home, becoming a homeless drifter. By the time he was sixteen, Gideon had begun compiling a petty crime profile.
He was arrested in Missouri and charged with robbery, burglary, and larceny. Gideon was sentenced to 10 years but released after three, in 1932, as the Great Depression was beginning.
Gideon spent most of the next three decades in poverty. He served additional prison terms at Leavenworth, Kansas, for stealing government property; in Missouri for stealing, larceny, and escape; and in Texas three times for theft.
Between his prison terms, Gideon was married four times. The first three marriages ended quickly, but the fourth to Ruth Ada Babineaux in October 1955 endured. They settled in Orange, Texas, in the mid-1950s. Gideon found irregular work as a tugboat laborer and bartender until he was bedridden by tuberculosis for three years.
In addition to the three children that Ruth already had, Gideon and Ruth had three others, born in 1956, 1957, and 1959: the first two in Orange, the third after the family had moved to Panama City, Florida. The six children were later removed by welfare authorities. Gideon worked as an electrician in Florida but began gambling for money because of his low wages. He did not serve more time in jail until 1961.
Arrest and trial
Arrest
On June 3, 1961, $5 (~$50 in 2023 based on inflation ) in change and a few bottles of beer and Coca-Cola were stolen from the Pool Room, a pool hall and beer bar that belonged to Ira Strickland Jr. Strickland also alleged that $50 was taken from the jukebox ($437 in 2022 terms). Henry Cook, a 22-year-old resident who lived nearby, told the police that he had seen Gideon walk out of the bar with a bottle of wine and his pockets filled with coins, and then get into a cab. Gideon was later arrested at a tavern.
First trial
Too poor to afford counsel, Gideon was forced to defend himself at his trial after being denied a lawyer by the trial judge, Robert McCrary Jr. At the time, Florida law only gave indigent defendants no-cost legal counsel in death penalty cases. On August 4, 1961, Gideon was convicted of breaking with intent to commit petty larceny, and on August 25, Judge McCrary gave Gideon the maximum sentence, five years in state prison.
Gideon v. Wainwright
While incarcerated, Gideon studied the American legal system. He concluded that Judge McCrary had violated his constitutional right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, applicable to Florida through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He then wrote to an FBI office in Florida and then to the Florida Supreme Court, but was denied assistance. In January 1962, he mailed a five-page petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States, asking the nine justices to consider his case. The Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal. The case was originally called Gideon v. Cochran and was argued on January 15, 1963. Gideon v. Cochran was changed to Gideon v. Wainwright after Louie L. Wainwright replaced H. G. Cochran as the director of the Florida Department of Corrections.