In 1961, Gideon was accused of breaking into the pool hall. After he was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison, Gideon took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Many people went broke and faced tough times. My mother was very strict and my life as a child was of the strict discipline."

Year, Year of Exoneration and Type of

At the age of fourteen, Gideon ran away from home. A lawyer—not a great lawyer, just an ordinary, competent lawyer—could have made ashes of the case." The crash was the result of risky financial decisions made by investors in the stock market. The country had changed, however, since Gideon had last been a free man.

of Corrections Convicted of breaking and entering in Florida, Clarence Earl Gideon set a major legal precedent when he challenged his conviction, claiming that he could not afford an attorney and should have been appointed one by the court. On August 4, 1961, Gideon went to trial for breaking and entering with the intent to steal. When he appeared in court, he was unable to pay an attorney to represent him, so he asked the judge to appoint one for him. All links will open in a new tab. The value of stocks fell dramatically, sending the economy into a tailspin. we missed, Tell His case came before the court of Judge Robert L. McCrary, Jr., where a jury of six men convened to hear the opposing arguments. The Society’s call numbers follow the citations in brackets.

When his mother learned that he was living with his uncle near Hannibal, she had him arrested. Gideon escaped from jail, but had nowhere to go in the middle of winter. In affirmation of the, The Court ruled in Gideon’s favor, holding that any person charged with a crime should have the right to an attorney regardless of his or her financial status. You may be trying to access this site from a secured browser on the server.

In forma pauperis is Latin for "in the character or manner of a pauper." He then turned to the highest court in the United States for help. We welcome new information from any source about exonerations already on our list and about cases not in the Registry that might be exonerations. Unable to pay for legal representation, Gideon informed the court, before the trial began, of his inability to procure the help of an attorney. 1989 - 2012, Tell us about an Exoneration that He broke into a store and stole clothes to stay warm, but was later arrested and convicted of stealing. After starting out at two dollars a day, he was assigned a job at the factory that paid twenty-five dollars a day. In a landmark legal decision, Gideon v. He was a man with an eighth-grade education who ran away from home when he was in middle school. After the Court denied Gideon’s petition, as a last resort, he submitted a handwritten petition to the Supreme Court of the United States for a writ of certiorari. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear his case and assigned a lawyer named Abe Fortas to represent him. Although Cook testified that, after a night of dancing, his friends happened to drop him off at the exact time and place of the crime, Gideon failed to press Cook any further on the happenstance nature of his whereabouts. The crash was followed by the Great Depression, a severe worldwide economic downturn that lasted until World War II. Henry Cook, the sole eyewitness, gave the most damaging testimony when he stated under oath that he saw Gideon inside the pool room at the time of the crime and then, several minutes later, coming out with a pint of wine in his hand. The National Registry of Exonerations is a project of the Newkirk Center for Science & Society at University of California Irvine, the University of Michigan Law School and Michigan State University College of Law. Police arrested Gideon on a tip given to them by Henry Cook, a 20-year-old who claimed to have witnessed Gideon absconding with the stolen merchandise. He asserted that the Constitution entitled him to legal representation, and without it he was denied due process of law as guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment. I requested the court to appoint me an attorney and the court refused.". Clarence Earl Gideon was a career criminal whose actions helped change the American legal system. When Cook took the stand, Turner presented him with this information and went on to question his reason for being out at that specific time in the morning. He later remembered, "My stepfather never could accept me or I could not accept him. Fortas argued, first, that “the aid of counsel is indispensable to a fair hearing,” and that even the most competent laymen cannot produce a reasonable defense without comprehensive knowledge of the legal process. It allows people who are too poor to afford a lawsuit or an attorney to pursue legal action without having to pay many of the legal fees and costs. Crime, Government Misconduct and Convicting the Innocent, Witness Recantations: Preliminary From his prison cell Gideon wrote, "It makes no difference how old I am or what color I am or what church I belong to if any.

Fortas would go on to become a member of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Once out of prison, Gideon saved enough money to buy a pool hall, but the business was a failure. When Clarence was five years old, his mother remarried. Turner’s help proved decisive. At Gideon’s second trial, he obtained the services of an appointed local defense attorney, W. Fred Turner. information about the Registry, Perjury or False Accusation, Inadequate Legal Defense. Gideon was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. Gideon was born on August 30, 1910, to Charles R. and Virginia Gregory Gideon in Hannibal, Missouri. It is administratively unworkable.” Moreover, since, Representing the respondent, Bruce Robert Jacob, a relatively inexperienced lawyer and the 26-year-old Assistant Attorney General of Florida, countered Gideon’s challenges by appealing directly to states’ rights. Clarence Earl Gideon Florida Dept. Unless otherwise noted, © The State Historical Society of Missouri, The State Historical Society of Missouri's Historic Missourians, When he lost his job in 1928, Gideon began committing crimes.

Although Cook reiterated the account he gave at the previous trial—that his friends dropped him off there around 5:30 a.m.—Turner asked why they would drop him off two blocks away from his home when they had driven nearly 60 miles from the dance hall where they spent the night. Many people were unemployed during this time, income dropped, and many families became homeless. Findings, May 2013, Exonerations in the United States: Gideon filed his case in forma pauperis with the U.S. Supreme Court. The question is I did not get a fair trial. Gideon refused to give up, however, and began to research the law. Believing that he had been denied his constitutional right to legal representation, he petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to have his sentence overturned, but the court denied his petition. He was found guilty of robbery, burglary, and larceny and sentenced to ten years in the Missouri State Penitentiary. As a result, Gideon did not go free, but he did receive a new trial with legal representation and was acquitted of robbing the pool hall. He argued that his right to legal representation as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution had been violated.

He described himself as someone who could not conform and "was miserable. Although the Court usually refrained from meddling with established precedents, in. It was founded in 2012 in conjunction with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. Gideon, a 50-year-old unemployed Caucasian with a long history of juvenile and adult felonies, was convicted of breaking and entering into the Bay Harbor Pool Room on June 3, 1961, in Panama City, Florida.

A shoemaker, Charles Gideon died the day before Clarence's third birthday. In a landmark legal decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court ruled that under the U.S. Constitution, state courts are required to appoint lawyers for those individuals accused of committing a crime who cannot pay for legal representation. Gideon began working at a shoe factory and got married. He argued on Gideon's behalf that all individuals accused of committing a felony should receive legal representation. Gideon was sentenced to three years at the Missouri State Reformatory for Boys.

Does the judge say, ‘You look stupid,’ or ‘Your case involves complicated facts’? Olivet Cemetery in Hannibal, Missouri. The Registry also maintains a more limited database of known exonerations prior to 1989. He spent much of his early adult life as a drifter, spending time in and out of prisons for nonviolent crimes. Fortunately for Gideon, the Supreme Court decided to hear his case and, in so doing, to reconsider the correctness of the precedent established under, With the help of a team of court-appointed lawyers led by renowned Washington attorney Abe Fortas, Gideon presented his argument to the Court in 1963. At around 5:30 a.m. on the morning of the crime, Gideon allegedly smashed a window leading into the pool room and stole approximately a dozen bottles of beer, a dozen bottles of Coca-Cola, several bottles of wine, about $5.00 from the cigarette machine, and $60.00 from the jukebox. After a year, he was released on parole. In late October 1929 a devastating stock market crash occurred on Wall Street. Because of Gideon's efforts, thousands of individuals who had been tried and convicted without legal representation were granted new trials or released from Florida prisons. Despite Gideon’s financial limitations, the law at the time—as articulated in the Supreme Court decision. The Registry provides detailed information about every known exoneration in the United States since 1989—cases in which a person was wrongly convicted of a crime and later cleared of all the charges based on new evidence of innocence. He later said, "Of all the prisons I have been in that was the worst." Please enable scripts and reload this page.