Running head: FINAL PAPER: GIDEON V.

WAINWRIGHT 1

FINAL PAPER
Andrei Scholz Jones
Trinity Law School
MLS 558 Legal Fundamentals
Professor C. Torres, Esq.
Summer 2020
 Abstract

In this research case study paper, I will examine the landmark case of Gideon v.

Wainwright, 372 US 335 – Supreme Court 1963 while addressing salient facts, procedural

posture, issues under consideration by the Court, the Court’s reasoning for its decision, the

holding of the case and the lasting effects of the Court’s decision in 1963. Finally, I will also

address the fairness of the Court’s decision.

Running head: Final Paper 3

372 U.S. 335 (1963)

GIDEON
V.
WAINWRIGHT, CORRECTIONS DIRECTOR.
Docket No. 155
Supreme Court of the United States.
Argued January 15, 1963
Decided March 18, 1963
Certiorari to the Supreme Court of Florida.
Author: Hugo Lafayette Black

Full case name: Clarence E. Gideon v. Louie L. Wainwright, Corrections Director

Citations: 372 U.S. 335
83 S. Ct. 792; 9 L. Ed. 2d
799; 5951 U.S. LEXIS
1942; 23 OHIO Op. 2d 258;
93 A.L.R. 2d 733

Prior Case History: Defendant convicted, Bay County, Florida Circuit Court, 1961; habeas

petition denied without opinion, sub. nom. Gideon v. Cochrane, 135 So. 2d 746 (Florida, 1961);

cert. granted, 370 U.S. 908, 1962.

Subsequent; On remand, 153 So. 2d. 299 (Fla. 1963); defendant acquitted, Bay County, Florida

Circuit Court (1963)

Running head: FINAL PAPER 4

Court membership: Chief Justice Earl Warren

Associate Justices: Hugo Black, William Brennan Jr., Tom Clark, William O. Douglass, Arthur

Goldberg, John M. Harlan II, Potter Stewart, and Bryon White.

Laws applied to the case were the U.S. Constitutional amendments VI, and XIV.

Holding of the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is a fundamental right

applied to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution Due Process Clause,

and requires that indigent criminal defendants be provided counsel at trial. Supreme Court of

Florida reversed. This case overturned a previous ruling in Supreme Court case Betts v. Brady

1942 whereby the prior judgement was affirmed.

Salient Facts

During the early morning hours in Panama City, Florida on June 3rd, 1961 a burglary took

place. The suspect entered Bay Harbor Pool room breaking through a front door and then

proceeded to also break a vending machine containing cigarettes and a record player. The

suspect then proceeded taking cash from a register. As police investigated the crime scene a

witness confessed to police that he had watched Clarence E. Gideon leaving the pool hall with a

wine bottle, soda, and a pocket full of loose change. Police then arrested Mr. Gideon based on

the eyewitness accusation charging him with the attempt to commit petty larceny. Mr. Gideon

was too poor to hire an attorney during his court appearance before a judge and was denied due

process of being appointed an attorney. Mr. Gideon stated that he was entitled to representation
by an attorney under the Supreme Court. The judge answered that only in cases of a capital

offense charge would counsel be assigned to a defendant.