A lot of different things helped push me down the road to law school. There's that scene in The Verdict when Paul Newman tells Charlotte Rampling about justice("See, the jury believes. The jury wants to believe...All of them...say, 'It's a sham, it's rigged, you can't fight city hall.' But when they step into that jury box...you just barely see it in their eyes..."). There's also the (as yet unrealized) promise of financial security. Maybe the most noble motivator I had was Anthony Lewis's Gideon's Trumpet. Clarence Earl Gideon was a poor drifter with a criminal history. On June 3, 1961, he was accused of taking $5 and some beer from a Florida pool hall. He was put on trial, denied counsel, and forced to defend himself pro se. Unsurprisingly, he lost, and was sentenced to five years in prison. He sent a petition to the United States Supreme Court, which took his case. The result was a case known to all law students: Gideon vs. Wainwright. This was the case that gave life to the 6th Amendment, guaranteeing criminal defendants the right to counsel (since modified to require counsel if the defendant faces six months or more imprisonment). This is a fascinating book because too often, the important cases that come down from the Supreme Court feel like exercises in the arcane. The nine justices sit in their marble temple and exclaim from on high. They thread factual needles, maneuver through procedural morasses, and carve their rules one stultifying opinion at a time. You forget - they forget - that there are lives at stake. That their decisions don't only affect "the law", they affect people. Gideon's Trumpet is the story of a mostly-forgotten man that changed constitutional law. Anthony Lewis, who was a great writer for the New York Times, does an excellent job telling this story. I always enjoy reading books by journalists; whatever you sacrifice by not having an expert as the author, you get back in fact finding and narrative ability. At the time of the Gideon case, Lewis shows how the tide of history was flowing in favor of the defendant. This was the heyday of the Warren Court, which remembered that little item called the Bill of Rights, and how it was supposed to protect the People from the Government. The Court's direction was underlined by its decision to appoint the eminent Abe Fortas to represent Clarence Gideon. The Court had chosen someone of more than ordinary experience and ability to represent Gideon, and the honor carried with it a special responsibility. If that most basic right, to be represented by counsel, was now to be extended, to all those charged with serious crimes in any court, the justices would want all possible intellectual support for taking the step. Fortas saw his job as reaching each of the nine. The Supreme Court ruled in Gideon's favor. They found that the right to counsel is a fundamental right, necessary for there to be a fair trial. This ruling was made applicable to the states through incorporation by the Fourteenth Amendment. Gideon was granted a new trial and given a lawyer. The jury deliberated for one hour.And he won. The landscape of criminal law changed for the better post-Gideon. The Sixth Amendment has always given the right to counsel, but left out that thorny point about paying (and with lawyers, that's important). As Lewis points out, at the time of the decision, nearly 40 states already provided counsel for felony defendants. What Gideon did, however, was not only to provide attorneys for defendants in those other states, but to make the right to an attorney fundamental, and one that couldn't be taken away by a state having second thoughts. Moreover, many states had been appointing private attorneys to defend alleged criminals. This is like having a pediatrician doing surgery; sure, it might work out all right, and the basic training is there, but you really should have an expert. Gideon led to the rise of public defenders, providing the necessary bulwark against the expertise, manpower, and limitless resources of the state. In America, you are guilty as soon as you're arrested. That's just how things have evolved and there's no sense arguing otherwise. Still, it's good to remember, from time to time, that the Goddesss Justice holds a scale. On one side is the state, its prosecutors, investigators, police officers, and detectives. On the other side, for a period in 1963, was one man sitting in his prison cell scribbling a petition to the Supreme Court. This man balanced the scales. Gideon's Trumpet tells his story.
In the early 1960's, Clarence Earl Gideon was arrested for burglarizing a pool hall. Gideon asked for an attorney to represent him at trial, something he could not pay for himself, but his request was denied. In those days, a small handful of states, including Florida where Gideon lived, had no procedure for routinely assigning counsel to indigent defendants in felony cases. The rule established by the Supreme Court some 20 years earlier was that to fulfill the constitutional right to counsel requirement, states only had to appoint counsel to indigent defendants when some "special circumstances" existed, such as evidence of mental incapacity. Gideon did not exhibit any special circumstance; he merely claimed his innocence, tried to show it himself at trial, and lost. After losing his appeals in state court, he filed a very short petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court saying only that he had requested counsel, that it was denied, and that he could not get a fair trial without an attorney. Gideon's Trumpet is the story of the case that established that states must provide counsel to poor criminal defendants.Several things stuck me about this book. First and foremost, the writer, Anthony Lewis did a wonderful job of explaining the legal procedure accurately. It's an archaic business that moves at a glacial pace. He also describes the legal concepts plainly enough for just about any reader to understand why the law was what it was, why it hadn't changed sooner, and why it changed. His writing is so crisp, clean,and to-the-point that he doesn't risk boring the reader with jargon. I had to check the biography several times to confirm that Lewis was a journalist and not a lawyer. Oh, how I wish journalists still took such pains to accurately inform the public. The story itself is also incredible. One stubborn man changed the law and changed how legal services are delivered to poor people. But he didn't really do it by himself; he had the backing of many honest, thoughtful and hard working people, and the stories of those people are included.I decided to give the book 5 stars because, although many would not be interested in reading a book about a legal case, it's one of the best example of the type. For any non-lawyer interested in the subject, this book will leave you with a solid understanding of the intricacies and internal logic of an important part of our legal system. While technology has changed Supreme Court procedure since the book was witten - most significantly it has changed the need for excessive amounts of printing - the Court remains in most ways the same. For lawyers, much of this will be familiar to you, especially if you remember reading Gideon v. Wainwright in our criminal law class. It's still worth a read, however, because it completes the story. It tells about how Gideon found himself in those circumstances, how he lawyers worked through their arguments and positions, how over 2 dozen states decided to file an amicus brief on the side of Gideon, and how the states implemented the new requirements after the opinion was handed down.
What do You think about Gideon's Trumpet (1989)?
The news this week of the death of Anthony Lewis at age 85 was enough to send me scurrying to the bookcase to dig out my copy of Gideon's Trumpet and reread it. Clarence Earl Gideon was arrested in Florida on a charge of breaking and entering and he was forced to represent himself at his trial because he couldn't afford an attorney. Gideon felt that this was a violation of his constitutional right to be represented by counsel and while he was in a Florida prison he sat down and wrote a petition for a writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court justices considered his petition in a Friday conference and decided to issue such a writ. This book follows the case of Clarence Earl Gideon through the judicial system culminating in the Supreme Court decision Gideon v. Wainwright which decided that every person has the right to be represented by counsel in a court of law and created the public defendant systems across the United States. As Anthony Lewis put it "the victory of Clarence Earl Gideon shows that even the poorest and least powerful of men--a convict with not even a friend to visit him in prison--can take his case to the highest court in the land and bring about a fundamental change in the law." This book puts a human face on each of the players in the case and ultimately reads like a novel. Highly recommended.
—Judy
For those who don't know, Gideon v. Wainwright was the landmark Supreme Court case that established the federal requirement for criminal courts to provide defense attorneys for the indigent. In other words, it's the reason we have public defenders today.The case began when Clarence Gideon, a poor white man sitting in a Florida prison for petty larceny, wrote to the Supreme Court that his 14th Amendment right to due process of law had been violated because the court that convicted him didn't provide him with a lawyer when he asked for one. At that time, courts would only appoint free attorneys under special circumstances, like capital crimes or blatant discrimination. Gideon's case did not meet those criteria. He was a white man accused of petty theft. So his case addressed the issue: is the right to an attorney a universal right as part of due process of law?What makes Gideon's story so inspiring is that it's a David and Goliath story. The Supreme Court rejects many more cases than it takes on, and that they chose Gideon's petition, which was handwritten in pencil and full of grammar and spelling errors, shows that the little man can sometimes get justice. The story was made into a TV movie starring Henry Fonda seventeen years later, and it's easy to understand why. Everyone loves to see the underdog triumph against the odds. But the book itself is much more educational than it is entertaining. As a matter of fact, it's pretty legalistic, and I don't think I would have had the patience for it without my paralegal education. But for all the legal history, there are some sections that humanize it: Gideon's original petition to the Supreme Court, Gideon's letter to his attorney telling the story of his life, and excerpts from the transcript of his final criminal trial in Florida. That mix of primary sources and author's commentary make it award-winning journalism, but as a reader, I would have liked even more primary sources. As the author said, our justice system gets hammered out based on the real interests of individuals, so the more we can hear of those individuals' voices, the better.One last tidbit of particular interest to me: Abe Fortas, the attorney who represented Gideon in the Supreme Court, was Jewish. The author of the book is also Jewish. So when it was all over (either the case or the research for the book; I'm not sure), Mr. Fortas presented Mr. Lewis with a shofar -the kind of "trumpet" the Biblical Gideon would have blown before battle. May Hashem surround His justice in mercy.
—Kressel Housman
I couldn't decide between 3 and 4 stars, maybe 3.5? However, it read more like a textbook. (I should have realized that the review on the back "exciting as any novel" was written by a Supreme Court justice, so it would be wordy!) I ended up skipping parts or just skimming them (especially when he described the lawyers in great detail :) ).I did enjoy learning how the law, and the way the Supreme Court works, has evolved even before the US was formed. There are certain standards we take for granted these days, and it took awhile for those to come into being. It is also amazing how the same words (in the Constitution, etc.) can be interpreted so many different ways. The author referred to the cases that were precendents for about 4-5 chapters before he explained what they were so that was confusing for a non-law student like me.
—Irish Gal
