The case centred on Clarence Earl Gideon, who had been charged with a felony for allegedly burglarizing a pool hall in Panama City, Florida, in June 1961. At his first trial he requested a court-appointed attorney but was denied. Prosecutors produced witnesses who saw Gideon outside the pool hall near the time of the break-in but none who saw him commit the crime. Gideon cross-examined witnesses, but he was unable to impeach their credibility or point out the contradictions in their testimony. The jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to five years in prison.
Gideon subsequently petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus from the Florida Supreme Court, arguing that, because he had not had an attorney, he had been denied a fair trial. The suit was originally Gideon v. Cochran; the latter name referred to H.G. Cochran, Jr., the director of Florida’s Division of Corrections. By the time the case was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court, Cochran had been succeeded by Louie L. Wainwright. After the Florida Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling, Gideon filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.
At the time, the Supreme Court had already dealt with several cases concerning the right to counsel. In Powell v. Alabama (1932)—which involved the “Scottsboro Boys,” nine black youths who had been found guilty of raping two white women—the court had ruled that indigent defendants charged with capital crimes were entitled to legal counsel. In Betts v. Brady, however, (1942), the court decided that assigned counsel was not required in felony cases except when there were special circumstances, notably if the defendant was illiterate or mentally challenged.
On January 15, 1963, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Gideon v. Wainwright. Abe Fortas, a Washington, D.C., attorney and future Supreme Court justice, represented Gideon for free before the high court. He eschewed the safer argument that Gideon was a special case because he had only had an eighth-grade education. Instead, Fortas asserted that no defendant, however competent or well educated, could provide an adequate self-defense against the state and that the U.S. Constitution ensured legal representation to all defendants charged with felonies. Two months later the court unanimously ruled that the denial of an attorney violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees due process. The decision overturned Betts v. Brady. Gideon was granted a retrial, and he was acquitted in 1963.