HIST 3850 Lecture Notes - Clarence Earl Gideon, Ernesto Miranda, In Forma Pauperis
Document Summary
Topic: extending civil rights into the 1960"s: the rise of lawyers. Gideon vs. wainwight 1963: clarence earl gideon, age 51, career minor criminal, appealing from florida on theft conviction, impoverished. No assets, no credit: he was a white man which is not what you would expect in a civil rights case, he had been in and out of prisons for much of his life. He had 4 previous felony convictions: he had never been a professional criminal. He could not settle down to just work: many felt he was a harmless human being, june 3rd, 1961. Someone broke into a pool hall in the middle of the night and robbed it. Stole cigarettes from the cigarette machine and broke into the jut box. Someone claimed to have seen gideon leave with bulging pockets and he received a harsh sentence of 5 years in prison: harsh sentence because of his previous criminal history, he felt personally it was too harsh.