Transcript
Speaker: The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker: This is True Crime XS. I think I've said this before, but I really like this time of year. I like Christmas time. It's one of my favorite times. And I've recently been down a rabbit hole of Coca -Cola creating Christmas. Have you ever heard of this before? I don't think so. I mean, I'm familiar, though, with ah the different things that come up, like with the polar bear commercials or whatever. This is kind of conspiracy theory, but it's kind of BS, too. They didn't really, quote, invent or create Christmas, but they did kind of play a big role in shaping how Santa Claus is viewed today.
Speaker: huh and the red and white came from them. It's it's interesting. I've seen like a lot of of little reels in my social media feeds about this. And every year I kind of go down that rabbit hole, but it was never really like,
Speaker: For me personally, it wasn't the gifts or Santa Claus. It's sort of the feeling of this time of year and I associate this time of year with like seeing a lot of family members I don't normally see. When I i had aunts when I was growing up who would have these big huge get -togethers and you know I would see my cousins and like everybody would come and and we would get together and play when we were younger. and it was just a There's this feeling about it, like very nostalgic feeling that I i can't explain. so It is weird. like By the time we get there, I've recorded all this like horrible true crime stuff. Particularly with us, we sort of focus in on wrongful convictions. But with the idea that like the bulk of these people that we talk about,
Speaker: they end up you know being able to be home with their families for the holidays. albeit i don't I don't know that like the happy endings are there in a way that people think about it. The the case that we ended up with today ended up talking about today. um It's an older one. It's it's actually a a really old case and it's one of the saddest cases. But personally, I feel like this case in sort of
Speaker: some of the things that came out of it are some of the most important things that have ever happened to the US justice system. And it it would be difficult to explain like the holding of the Supreme Court as it relates to this case and everything without sort of going through what happened.
Speaker: um And I see this guy, I like i see this picture on on different things over the years, and I always think of like Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole, because it sort of happens down in Florida. um it's it's a It's a relatively strange story.
Speaker: That's interesting that that makes you think of them. It does. Like, I mean, ultimately, it's one of those things where he's sort of a homeless drifter, they and that's what I pictured them being. Yeah, that makes sense. I can see where you would associate him with them. I can see that I have never done it myself, but I can see that.
Speaker: So in this particular case, we're going to pull from like a number of places that you can't really find on the internet anymore. But his story does eventually get turned into a book. And then the book becomes like a TV movie. um You can read about him a number of places in terms of the Supreme Court of the US because they do, they link to a lot of court documents related to his case. His entire trial Transcript with i think it's a second trial that i was reading um it's with florida's fourteen judicial circuit and it happens in august of nineteen sixty three but the entire transcript is available in a pdf form and if you wanna like read a really really interesting story that
Speaker: You know, like I said, has it it has shaped a lot of things about the justice system. ah This is certainly the case to do that. Right. And it is a sad case. However, I feel like it has, along with the sadness, an interesting sort of hopeful twist and that in my opinion.
Speaker: Yeah, I would kind of agree with that. It's sort of strange to tell his story in terms of like, how do you put it all together? We don't have a a lot of great sources on it. I know that people have, I know they exist because I've actually gone on and contributed to them on different, um I'm gonna call them Wikis, meaning Wikipedia and other sources like Wikipedia. You can actually find ah several of them related to this case, but the best sources for this are the Supreme Court and then the Florida Courts, because you can read the whole, if you really wanna go down a rabbit hole, you can read like,
Speaker: his entire life in there. here's Here's what we're going to start with. Clarence Earl Gideon was born in Hannibal, Missouri. His dad died when he was very young. By most reports, I believe that Gideon is three turning four years old when his dad dies. His mother gets married to someone else. And when Clarence Gideon is around 14 years old,
Speaker: He quit school. He was never the type of person that appeared to fit in at school. We don't know a lot about his early life except that he was basically considered a juvenile delinquent. He runs away from home and he essentially becomes a homeless criminal By the time he's, you know, 15 years old, according to court records, and I can't find other sources on this, his criminal profile begins when he is 16. He gets arrested in Missouri and he's charged with robbery, burglary, and larceny. He gets sentenced to 10 years in prison when this happens, but he's released after three. So the earliest thing I find on him is he's released in prison in 1932 in Missouri.
Speaker: So when he's released from prison, he would be around 21 years old, which means he basically is arrested and and headed for prison between his 17th birthday and his 18th birthday. He's poor for the next three years. He has multiple additional prison terms served in Kansas and Missouri.
Speaker: He ends up in Texas where he goes into short prison stints three different times and He somehow during all of this he gets married four different times. He's had a lot of interesting jobs according to the Wikipedia entry and the court documents he worked as a bartender a maintenance man an electrician a cobbler a shoemaker and a tugboat, a deckhand, and he at some point owned a small cafe and possibly a pool hall based on his story. On June 3rd of 1961, he is in a situation where about $5 worth of change and a couple of bottles of of beer and soda, Coca -Cola,
Speaker: is what is referenced, are stolen from this place known as the pool room. This is a pool hall and like a little bar that only serves like beer that belonged to a man named Ira Strickland Jr. According to Strickland's story, the money that was taken is taken out of the jukebox. He claims it's quite a bit more. There's a resident who lives nearby named Henry Cook.
Speaker: He tells the police when Ira is trying to report all of this, that he had seen Clarence Gideon walk out of the pool bar with a bottle of wine and his pockets full of quarters. And ah according to his story, Gideon gets into a cab and leaps. The local police don't have to look far because Gideon is just in another bar and they arrest him. What's interesting about this is we have to think about it from the perspective of gideon is born in 1910. This is happening just before his birthday in 1961. So he's 51 years old. He is poor as poor can be.
Speaker: He cannot afford a lawyer. He asked the trial judge in this theft case to give him a lawyer. The trial judge does not. That trial judge was Robert McCrae Jr. At the time, Florida law only gave indigent defendants or defendants who could not afford to pay for their own defense, no cost legal counsel if the case was going to be a capital case or a death penalty case.
Speaker: So on August 4th of 1961, after defending himself, Clarence Gideon ends up being convicted of breaking with the intent to commit petty largely. So breaking, do you know how that works? Breaking and entering, housebreaking, depending on where you're at. Correct, right. It's just the act of illegally entering some premises usually a building or a residential premises without any kind of permission, the what makes it breaking and entering is that it's believed you're intending when you break in to commit another criminal offense. So he's convicted of breaking and entering or breaking, housebreaking. They don't call it housebreaking in Florida when you break into a business, but that's basically what they're saying he did. With the intent to commit petty, largely,
Speaker: Now, petty larceny is larsly itself is when you're taking something without permission, personal property or the property of another ah of a business. Now, petty larceny means it's a very small amount. So, August 25th, 1961, Judge Robert McCreary sentences Clarence Gideon to the maximum sentence.
Speaker: That's going to be five years in state prison. So while he's in prison, Clarence Gideon starts to study law. He concludes on his own, without counsel, that Judge Robert McCreary has violated his constitutional right to counsel, which is part of the guarantee under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Speaker: and applicable to Florida through the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. I would say that what you just stated to us today is a given. It is a given, yes. Okay, part of the law that is so fascinating and the American judicial system is the fact that like case law is what establishes what is a given to us today, right? Correct, correct. And so this is that very case that it's not the only case, but this was a monumental movement in how our judicial system works. And one of the things I found so fascinating about it is Gideon
Speaker: only ever, he was a poor person correct who didn't have a whole lot of opportunities. And to my knowledge, everything I've seen, he has never committed a violent crime. I've not seen anything that even accuses them of committing a violent crime, but I have seen how looking at it like some of the burglaries and thefts, like they're frequently lumped in with violent crimes. They just don't happen to be with this guy. Oh yeah, correct. Because of that, I found that interesting because I make a very stark distinction and I guess it's because I'm aware of how resources are delegated. Now it would have been different in the 60s, but I would say it would but apply even more so. It
Speaker: It drives me crazy when I see these crimes that no one gets hurt being like constantly adjudicated and the person is put away and whatever. But you've got violent crimes that go unsolved because the most important aspect of our judicial system would be the protection of a human beings person.
Speaker: because murder is the worst thing. I mean, our attack, right? Assault and murder on a human. Yes. Those are the worst things. Right. And so to me, this case, I would say, man, five years for stealing, you know, however Depending on who you hear, it's either $5 or $50. It's not a lot of money. Right. And some coke and some wine, right? That's all that was taken. And it's based on, you know, eyewitness testimony, I guess. But anyway, it's very interesting that that set of events leads here, right? It is. And like, I'm not defending Gideon either. Gideon is committing petty crime. And he's been committing petty crimes at the time this happens for 50 years. That's correct This is the way he has lived his life his entire life. Maybe not 50 years He's 50 something and like he's been committing these crimes since he was very young But it seems to me that he considers this more how -to he survives in his job. I don't think he's like going in and cleaning people out. it's These are certainly not all victimless crimes, like some crimes that you and I have talked about, but these crimes themselves seem to be more for his sustenance than
Speaker: for the criminal activity part correct and all i'm saying is that i feel like crime should be dealt with even if they don't involve violence i'm just noting that there's not much of a distinction made a lot of times in what a criminal record entails right right you but to me someone who's stealing small amount petty amounts of stuff I mean, yeah, he's stealing from his survival. Is there a better way to do that? Well, yeah, there is, right? ah Get a job or whatever. But like my point being, he didn't hurt anybody. That's my point. it's I'm not saying it's okay to steal things. I'm just saying that it' see it's interesting that this guy who committed this very petty theft
Speaker: is like immediately apprehended and put in jail for five years and we have murders that walk around and they never get apprehended. I've seen so many so the way that this would play out in this day and age unless I'm missing something and how they're describing this and I'm going by exactly what the court documents are saying this would be probably a trespassing and a misdemeanor shoplifting or or petty theft today. And the so this crime in most jurisdictions today, ah for somebody with a hefty criminal record, would not elevate to a felony unless it was a habitual, then it could potentially elevate elevate to habitual misdemeanor theft.
Speaker: or misdemeanor large thing, it would result in a sentence of less than three months and in jail. Right. But also, and I could be wrong about this, but this type of theft, like if you called the police today and you were like, hey, my bar got broken into and there's five to $50 missing from the jukebox. Like, I don't even know that they would show up, honestly.
Speaker: It would not even qualify for grand larceny. The definition of a felony today is if you can spend more than a year in jail because of it. And this to me, that's most places to me, unless they hit him with a habitual, which was not even a thing in the sixties, they couldn't have really put him in a state prison for five years for what he did here. It's really what he does next. That's pretty impressive. So this is a drifter. He's obviously,
Speaker: kind of living hand -to -mouth here. Whatever he can take is how he's surviving. But then he writes the FBI office in Florida after reading the Constitution. And then he writes to the Florida Supreme Court. He's not sure what to do with the knowledge that he has. And the FBI and the Florida Supreme Court are like, dude, you're crazy. We're not going to help you. So he does something that He does this in January of 1962, so it's not that far after his trial in August of 1961. He does something that was very difficult. He writes a five -page petition for a writ of sartoria to the Supreme Court of the United States and asks the nine justices to consider his case. All right, I just want to point this out again. In January of 1962, Clarence Gideon handwrites and mails a five -page petition
Speaker: for rid of Satoria to the Supreme Court of the United States and asked the nine justices of the Supreme of the supreme Court to consider his case. What do you think would happen if a prisoner today hand wrote a five -page document and sent it to the Supreme Court? I don't think they'll accept it.
Speaker: I don't think you can write a handwritten document, maybe, but I don't know that it would get much traction. However, if there were an issue to arise that went to this level, because you got to keep in mind, he's not writing to say they put me in jail for five years.
Speaker: and i didn't do it, right? He's writing to say, I was arrested in Florida, and I had to defend myself against criminal charges. And I don't think that complies with the Constitution of the United States.
Speaker: You know, constitutional questions, they practically have original jurisdiction with the Supreme Court. We have had these landmark cases throughout the 1900s that were put before a competent panel of judges sitting on the Supreme Court. and And I know there's a lot of bureaucratic red tape and politics involved in this, but they're competent to the extent that we're not in a situation like Gideon found himself in. Because basically when he said, hey, I've been arrested, I want an attorney. Now, I have not seen it, I'm sure it's somewhere, but I have not seen it elaborated on how he would have known that. But my guess is he had to have requested the attorney and been denied the attorney.
Speaker: He was denied the attorney in the pre -trial hearing and it ends up going immediately to trial with him defending himself by the judge, Robert McCleary. Right. Okay. And so that's what the grounds for appeal were. Now, if he hadn't asked for an attorney,
Speaker: and he just wasn't given an attorney, I don't know that he could have appealed that. that it's a I mean, there's possible ways that it could have gone. But so I'm going to guess from his previous run -ins with the law in different states, perhaps, he had an understanding of what should happen. And when he said, hey, I need my attorney, and they said, no, he must have been genuinely surprised. Do you think? Yeah, yeah. That kind of lit a fire, right? I mean, one way or the other. I don't really know exactly what happened there. But my guess would be that that is sort of how it went down because states
Speaker: They operate independently of the federal government and states have their own constitution and they can allow more protection to its citizens through any law or regulation or constitutional state constitutional amendment that they want to. They can give citizens of their state more rights. They cannot, however, go below the standard that is set out in the United States Constitution, right?
Speaker: yeah When the Constitution was put together by our forefathers by the it like at the federal level, they said, here in this country, no matter what they decide to do further for their residents,
Speaker: All the states agree that we are going to follow these fundamental rights. And so the Sixth Amendment is the right to counsel. And the Fourteenth Amendment means that it's how all the other amendments get applied, right?
Speaker: that nobody should be denied process any reason, right? That they have to get the same. Now, up until this point, Florida had, and I i don't know how much this has changed today, and I have sort of a reasoning behind that. ah We may get to, we may not, I don't know, but Florida had satisfied the need for ah counsel by saying, if it's real serious, we'll appoint you somebody. Correct. But they were the ones defining what was serious. Right. And it was a high bar, right? Correct. well, today from it's hard to look at it from today knowing what we know, right? right um I find this type of case like super fascinating because it's one of the things I mean, we've talked about before, like not talking to police without an attorney. Well, like here we've delved all the way back to where like
Speaker: you're never going to get an attorney, right? I mean, right so one way or the other, you're going to jail. And if you think about the time and place we're talking about here, and the situation, this crime, this this very, I don't want to say like, it just, this wasn't that much of a crime, in my opinion, okay?
Speaker: But this is how we get there, right? A lot of these crimes tend to clog the judicial system. I'll just say it that way. Right. That's why it has evolved the way it has, because in this particular case, the prosecutor was an attorney, obviously.
Speaker: And they know the law, and they present the law to a average everyday person who has been alleged to have committed this crime. And they have to defend themselves right there, right then and there, or whenever it's scheduled, right? The judge said, you don't get the right to have anybody represent you. And right there, we know today that that's an unfair playing field, right?
Speaker: There's nothing about our judicial system that would ever make me think that that would be okay because the prosecutors and law enforcement and the judge, they are all going to do the right thing even if the defendant does not have a knowledgeable advocate in his corner or her corner. I wouldn't think that for a second, would you? No.
Speaker: and That's where the concept of that comes from, is this man who's sitting in jail having said to the judge in Florida, hey, I've been charged with this crime. I need an attorney. The judge said, ah, sorry. It's just a small crime. You're only going to lose five years in jail. and That's not really what he said. But you know that that's ah that's a significant sentence, right? Five years is significant. um yeah I would say like five days is significant if you get down to the nuts and bolts of the situation. The state depriving you of your liberty is a big deal, even if it's just for a very short amount of time, because that's how precious our freedom is, right? It takes an interesting turn here, and that's the reason that I'm able to think that now. It does, yeah.
Speaker: You want me to continue with what happens? yeah So this guy who was having trouble defending himself has convinced the Supreme Court to hear his appeal with a five page petition ah rid of writ of Satoria. So this case is set as Gideon versus Cochran.
Speaker: And it was said to be argued on January 15th, 1963. Now it gets changed because the person who's in charge of the Florida Department of Corrections as their director at the time was H .G. Cochran, but it becomes Louis L. Wainwright. So the case is known after it's argued ah January 15th, 1963 as Gideon versus Wainwright. Now,
Speaker: They don't let Gideon come up and represent himself in front of the Supreme Court. They bring on a gentleman named Abe Fortas, and Abe will eventually be a Supreme Court justice himself. So for Florida, we have Assistant Attorney General Bruce Jacob. He's assigned to argue against Abe on behalf of Gideon. So Abe Fortas is on behalf of Gideon. Bruce Jacob is arguing against Abe in terms of he's arguing for the state basically which is strange because ultimately when a decision in a holding like this is made affects all of the states correct because it's the supreme court but so basically the position is Abe is
Speaker: And it's ironic that he gets appointed an attorney here, right? I'm just saying, like the irony in and of itself is correct, cannot be overlooked. But basically Abe Fortas, he's going to present all the legal arguments that that Gideon wouldn't know because he's just a person, right? He's not a legal expert. The court does appoint Abe Fortas and he's going to say like why what happened was unconstitutional and then Bruce Jacob is going to go against him and explain to the Supreme Court panel why it was perfectly fine for Florida to do what they did and their justification for the circumstances with which they deny counsel and how it doesn't violate the Sixth Amendment pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment, right?
Speaker: Right, so Bruce Jacob makes a great argument. He says that the issue at hand is a state issue. It is not a federal issue and he thinks that the federal government should stay out of the state's business. The practice of only appointing counsel under special circumstances in non -capital cases has sufficed And he says if if this goes through, that thousands of convictions would have to be thrown out if they changed this. And that Florida has followed for 21 years, in good faith, a ruling that the 1942 Supreme Court made called Betts v. Brady.
Speaker: Now, Betts versus Brady, it was a landmark Supreme Court case when it happened in 1942, and the the case was surrounding the circumstances of counsel being denied to indigent defendants who were being prosecuted by a state. Now, there was reinforcement in that case that happens over time in in several other cases, but it only dealt with the Sixth Amendment part of this. Well, Abe Fortas says,
Speaker: A common man with no training in the law could not possibly go up against a trained lawyer and win. And the the crux of his argument against Bruce Jacob can really be summed up in about eight words He said, you cannot have a fair trial without counsel. The Supreme Court on March 18th, 1963, they deliver their decision in Gideon versus Wainwright, and they rule unanimously, all nine justices, in Clarence Gideon's favor that what
Speaker: Abe Fortas had said that a common man with no training in the law could not go up against a trained lawyer and win, and that you cannot have a fair trial without counsel was correct. Right, and so arguably Betts versus Brady, which is the 1942 holding that Gideon effectively overturned. The underlying notion in that case was, it was sort of the opposite because they were basically saying, in order to prevail on the claim, there had to be a valid argument that it was a fundamentally unfair situation. And it you couldn't just blanketly apply representation requirements of the Sixth Amendment.
Speaker: through the 14th Amendment to every single person who was ever subjected to a trial in a court of law, right? Yeah. So Betz himself, he had been indicted for robbery and he had requested trial counsel, trial judges refused it. Betz ends up representing himself. He's convicted of the robbery. The conviction, he appeals it all the way up to the Supreme Court on the basis that that he was being held unlawfully because he had been denied counsel. And the ruling there, the holding there, was that the due process of law does not demand that, I think it was the state of Maryland and Betz vs. Brady, automatically furnish counsel to an injured defendant. Under that, the way it was interpreted for many years, because like 20 years have gone by. And Florida is the interpretation that we're holding here. They had really looked at it that outside of like capital cases, so non -capital cases, there had to be something like the defendant could not speak for themselves, they might be illiterate, or they might have like a ah lower intelligence quotient score, an IQ score. Those were the situations that Betts versus Brady had held on to, which fell under the Sixth Amendment. And now the Supreme Court is saying that not only
Speaker: um or does that apply where you would have to do it under, we're gonna expand that, we're gonna basically, and like you said, you said overturn, that's probably a better way to explain it than than what I said. They're basically saying Betts versus Brady has to be for anyone, and we're gonna have to call it Gideon versus Wainwright, because essentially, if somebody is going up against a trained lawyer, they need a trained lawyer representing them.
Speaker: Absolutely, that's exactly right. And I have a feeling that up to that point, now there was ah a very strong dissent by Heathrow Black in the Betts versus Bray case, but it I have a feeling that there was a reliance on like a more perfect world theory, right? Right, right. in the event that there's some unfair, fundamental unfairness happening, it's going to be readily recognized and the defendant's gonna be able to speak up, even if he's not an attorney. And it's gonna be readily recognized by the prosecutor and the judge and the defendant, and it's all gonna end up being a fair trial. And while i I could totally get behind that situation, that is never what happened. right
Speaker: And I don't know where the skew began, but I'm going to go with probably when it became people's paid jobs and their paid jobs relied on their performance of not justice, but their role. And the role was interpreted as a prosecutor puts people in jail and a judge sentences them to jail as opposed to justice being served.
Speaker: Right. So if you really want to go down a rabbit hole, it's totally worth, uh, reading best versus Brady and the the way that case played out and Gideon versus Wayne, right? Is a fascinating, uh, follow -up to that, that is not overturned. It's in fact, it's pretty staunchly used today in how at least the courts in my jurisdiction is how they, um, how they operate. Like everyone gets an attorney.
Speaker: Well, yeah, everybody has the right to counsel now, and it's because of this case. But what I was going to say earlier, when I said that it kind of gets into a different situation, what I would say to that is, yes, now taxpayer dollars in every jurisdiction fund the public defender's office, right? Yes. Just like the district attorney's office, except they're not really even, they're not on an even playing field, really. However,
Speaker: Well, I would say the public defenders are a lot better now. Well, at this point in time, there were no public defenders. Correct. This was what made public defenders be a thing. Now, granted, I'm not saying, like, ah there's a lot of very competent public defenders out there. A lot of times jurisdictions have come up with great plans to, like, rotate attorneys that do other things otherwise through doing public defense cases, right? Yeah, we now have appointed attorneys and then we have full -time public defenders. There's a huge difference. Appointed attorneys can earn their trial hours at the district and superior court level in the jurisdictions that I'm familiar with, where they learn how to be a lawyer while like under the tutelage of either a judge or another attorney who are like there's they're appointed cases. They may be in construction law or or they could be in corporate law, but they can come over and do indigent defense and they can learn a lot from IDS services in how you litigate cases, even if you're only working on misdemeanors to start you can get some really kick ass lawyers that way. And we have professional defenders of indigent folks. So really the only qualification here that you need to get a public defender, you basically have to not have, it's not even that you have to be poor. It's like you don't have the resources of a trial attorney because that can get expensive super fast.
Speaker: Right, and I would say, I would go on to say, and I've said it before on this show, very few of us could afford to defend ourselves in a serious criminal trial. Very few of us. Now, I'm not talking about the petty stuff, right? but And you don't have a right to an attorney in a civil matter. It's only when, at the end of the day, you've been charged with a crime, and I want to say,
Speaker: Now I might mess up here, but does it have to require, um, the possibility that your freedom will be infringed upon? Uh, yeah, depending on the jurisdiction, that's most places like, so okay if you get a speeding ticket or a seatbelt ticket, or you have a minor car accident, you don't have a right necessarily to an attorney for an infraction. You have to go to traffic court, which usually has like 500 people in it anyways on any given Monday.
Speaker: But if it's the possibility that you can spend any time in jail, meaning, quote, serious misdemeanors, felonies, then that's your freedom being basically infringed on.
Speaker: You get an attorney. And so I would argue that the mold was broken here. And here's why. All of a sudden, as the case all evolves into what is acceptable, all these people have to suddenly um have attorneys, right? yeah Yes, yes. OK. It changes the dynamic because, essentially, even though it's impossible, money is not supposed to affect the delegation of justice, right? Correct. The fact that you can't afford an attorney is not supposed to affect the fact that if the state cannot prove their case against you, you should not go to prison for it. That's what essentially not enforcing, you know, public defenders being required. That's what it was doing. And, you know, attorneys, they go to law school and essentially they practice law. And if they happen to be a practicing criminal defense attorney, this is before, you know, public defenders were a thing. They went and got the knowledge to do this. They can charge whatever they want.
Speaker: yeah And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but only because now we have the public defense system. However, I am not saying that it is an across the board measurement, but I would say that your representation with a public defender or a paid attorney. The mileage can vary substantially with either one. Oh, I know public defenders that will deliver you a $500 ,000 job. And I know paid attorneys you could give $500 ,000 to and you'll still go to jail. Well, right. Or they will not affect it. Well, sometimes you're going to jail, right?
Speaker: I'm just saying they could go either, like you can pay somebody that like they may do an adequate job in terms of your situation. If you demand a trial and like really you shouldn't have some of what you're paying for could be the negotiations to minimize the impact of your offenses on your life.
Speaker: Right, to make sure that you receive a fair trial, right? Right. There's a difference between like a fair trial and being found not guilty. Now, we have this huge bubble of like, what the hell happened in the 90s, right? We did, yes.
Speaker: with bought and paid for defense attorneys who were actually successful in granting wishes, it seemed like. yeah But those cases, they're not an adequate representation of how it's supposed to work. Now it happened, right? But again, it's all relative, I think. But back to this case. So now we have Gideon. He writes to the justices and he's appointed a representative to argue the case for him. And they agree. Yep. They agree. So he's weirdly just in Florida alone from what the numbers say, 2000 people who were convicted without a lawyer are suddenly walking free because of the result of Gideon versus Wainwright.
Speaker: Gideon is not that lucky, but he does get a retrial. So he doesn't have to do his sentence is vacated. He doesn't have to do the five -year state prison sentence, but he does have to go back to court. So after this decision, there's some back and forth between Abe Fortas and Clarence Gideon.
Speaker: And Abe warns him, look, I'm from DC. I do this up here. I was assigned to you, but I think it's better that you have a Florida lawyer who knows the Florida courts as locally as possible represent you in your retrial. So Abe Fortas finds a lawyer in Miami who has worked with the Florida ACLU at the time, which that's the ACLU is what we know the mouse today, and they have branches everywhere. But back then, it just would have been the Florida Civil Liberties Union.
Speaker: So, this lawyer recruits another experienced criminal lawyer, and they come before Judge Robert McCreary in Panama City. The jurisdictions are different, and he remembers Abe having said that. So, he says to Judge Robert McCreary, who heard the first trial, is now going to hear the second trial, that he's not sure he wants Miami lawyers. And McCreary is in kind of, a ah if you read the trial transcripts of the second trial, it's very long, um he's kind of in a precarious situation here. he's got to do right by this particular defendant because now he's part of this huge thing. And he says, who do you want? And he picks out a local lawyer who was named Fred Turner. So Fred Turner agrees that he's going to come in and represent Clarence Gideon. And this is going to be a huge deal for Turner's career, by the way. So the judge schedules this retrial ah five months after the Supreme Court decision for August 5th, 1963.
Speaker: He also gives Clarence Gideon bail. So if he can raise $1 ,000, he could be released. He's unable to raise the money because he's all alone down in Florida. This is not really where he's from. He doesn't have anyone here. So he stays in jail for this period of time. During the trial, Fred Turner brings out ah the first eyewitness, and that was the gentleman we talked about, Henry Cook.
Speaker: So Henry Cookett told a lie in the first trial about not having a criminal conviction on his record, and he calls him out on that. Fred Turner says, why did they drop you off two blocks from your home when they'd taken you 60 miles? This is related to a couple of different things that went on related to him. is In his closing statement, Fred Turner suggested that ah Henry Cook had likely been the lookout for a group of young men who had stolen the beer and the coins from the pool room in Bay Harbor. So his statements trip him up. There was some issues here that like I don't totally agree with. And if you read it in the trial transcripts, you'll totally understand what I'm talking about. Fred Turner had been Henry Cook's lawyer in the previous cases. So he knew that Henry Cook did this. The police detective came in and he pointed out like sort of the crime itself. He stated that a myriad of items had been stolen from this pool room in Bay Harbor. He pointed out that four -fifths of wine were on his inventory of the theft, 12 bottles of Coca -Cola, 12 cans of beer, $5 from a cigarette machine, and around $60 from a jukebox.
Speaker: All of this money was in quarters. So Detective Pitts, he states that when he arrests Clarence Gideon, he had $25 worth of quarters on him when he was arrested. So he's got 100 quarters in his pocket. Fred Turner also got a statement, I think it's a sworn affidavit the way they talk about it, from a cab driver who had driven clarence gide and from a phone booth outside of the grocery store to a bar in panama city when this was all happening that cab driver stated he did carry clarence getting in along but that clarence did not have wine or beer or soda when he picked them up even though henry cook had testified that he watched clarence gideon from the first trial walk from the pool hall to the phone on the corner the payphone on the corner and then watch them wait for the cabin get into the cab but the driver did test the phone
Speaker: but clarence getting and paid for the ride was six quarterters So the prosecution brought out that Clarence Gideon had said to the cab driver, if anyone asks where you left me off, you don't know and you ain't seen me. The defense brought out that Clarence Gideon had said the same thing on numerous other occasions. And the cab driver, one of the cab drivers they bring in, which I can't tell if he's on the stand or if they're reading something he's written at this point in terms of the trial transcript, he basically said, I understand that
Speaker: it was related to his wife. He had trouble with his wife and did not want her to know where he had been or where he was going. So this part had not been brought out in the first trial. So the jury goes out after closing arguments here in this case, not a super lengthy trial, but it's definitely a more focused trial than the first trial had been. And after an hour of deliberations, guess what happens? He's acquitted. He is acquitted. In the book,
Speaker: I think anthony lewis wrote the book it's called gideon's trumpet anthony lewis said that gideon's insistence on having a local lawyer, Fred Turner, probably won the case for him. It is doubtful that the Civil Liberties Union lawyers from Miami would have been quite as effective with a Panama City jury. I have a tendency to agree with that. And it makes me wonder if if Clarence Earl Gideon was secretly a genius. I kind of think that too. So I'm going to say a couple of things here. We'll talk about like the rest of of Gideon's world. First of all,
Speaker: I'm going to say this and people can eat it. But Gideon did an amazing thing here. Okay. He provided lawyers for everybody in the country, but he also did a terrible thing. Every prosecutor since Clarence Gideon's decision with the United States Supreme Court is mad. And I will tell you that today judges who were prosecutors at some point in time are also mad. And the thing that's terrible is you get a plea deal.
Speaker: Almost everybody gets a plea deal. It's almost without exception, but I know somebody will point out, but such and such didn't get a plea deal on this big major case, blah, blah, blah. That that happens. Sometimes plea deals aren't offered. Most cases have a plea deal. And if you don't take the plea deal and you get in the public defender or an appointed attorney, which is different depending on the jurisdiction and you're found guilty, man, they put the screws to you.
Speaker: they give you a much harsher sentence than you might have gotten previously. That is an effect of Gideon versus Wainwright that people don't talk about, but people definitely get better representation. And I think it it in some way clogs the criminal justice system a little more, but I think it also moves it along a little better. Well, what you just said, it made me feel a little weird. oh I can't really explain it because in Gideon's case specifically, they brought up information that tended to rely on that the, well, okay. So they have, you know, the witness testifying and you've got the defense attorney saying, hey, but you didn't tell anybody you were a criminal. And then they've got
Speaker: the situation where he paid the cab driver and the cab driver says Gideon told him when he left him, if anyone asks you where you left me, you you haven't seen me, which sounds suspicious until the cab driver further elaborates in the second trial that, oh, it's because his wife was looking for him and he was having trouble and he just didn't want her to know what he was doing.
Speaker: Then you've got, oh, and also of the testimony from the cab driver saying that like Gideon didn't have that stuff that was stolen from the place when he got in the cab. And so this was his getaway car. So where is that stuff? So to me, this is a case where are like the prosecution didn't make the case. The evidence was not there.
Speaker: and In cases like that, he should not be convicted, right? I totally agree with you. I've tried in the past when I say what I just said to specify that like it's really about guilty people going to jail and not wasting the court's time with a trial.
Speaker: but it's difficult to say that because we still have people that are found guilty that are like obviously we wouldn't have the home for the holidays series if people weren't found guilty of something they didn't do right and so that goes back to again like if the civil liberties union lawyers had done this and they didn't have the information about or they couldn't point to the additional information of the cab driver because he's just answering questions. They may not have had information. um
Speaker: that started creating reasonable doubt for the jury with regard to whether or not Gideon had actually committed this crime. Now, when you get a criminal on the stand testifying very specifically, now we don't get the details of like how he knew it was Gideon or whatever, but like, you know, that can be undermined as well. However, I would say that there's gonna be something else that goes wrong further when the plea deal is not reached and when they go to trial and you get the screws put to you as you put it. yeah But I want to remind, like this is so important,
Speaker: i you You know, you said the judges and the prosecutors are all mad. And I agree, they probably are mad because they can't just put people in jail willy -nilly, right? Except they still do, right? This is this has barely thwarted the process. But think about how much worse that would be. I'm just saying. But keep in mind,
Speaker: The justice system works for us. We have judges and prosecutors in place to make sure we have civilized society. Right. And I get where that goes askew, right? that I mean, it goes off the road like lots of times and anybody's in any one person's given life.
Speaker: Like, you're going to be very fortunate if you don't ever have to deal with the system. But having to deal with the system, you don't feel like in ah you're in a position of power, right? Right. At the end of the day, maybe some people do. I don't know. Maybe it's just my personal life experience and what I've seen other people experience in the research we do specifically for this show or otherwise.
Speaker: But in the event that everything lines up like it's supposed to, there's no problem with a defendant being represented by competent counsel because it's all in the name of justice, right? yep I would agree with that, and I say that I know that like this judge gave him five years even before this decision, but like you know going through a trial really, it is, ah in some instances, it's a situation where lawyers and judges, they get kind of angry at wasted resources. I get angry at wasted resources too. I just like i disagree with like which resources are are wasted when it comes to some of this.
Speaker: ah I have a couple of other things about this. I wanted to throw out there. And I think some of this is now in the Wikipedia. It should be um if the edit goes through. So one of the interesting things about Abe Fortas was he asked Clarence Gideon to send him his story.
Speaker: So Gideon sits down and writes a 22 -page hand -printed letter on prison stationery. And one of the major things that he said in this letter is about his kids. So if you read his story, depending on where you pick it up, you don't even know that he has kids when he's doing this five -year sentence and like all of this stuff happens. But in the letter, he wrote that the Florida State Welfare Agency had been taking care of their children. They they were getting different levels of welfare and and and they had trouble with their kids because he and his wife both had criminal records. There were the church that had been helping them out. And so Gideon and his wife had been separated, but they had an arrangement and he would basically pay like a small amount of child support a week, which would be transferred to his family.
Speaker: And he concluded the letter to Abe Fortas by saying, thanks for reading all of this. Please try to believe that, like, all I want from life is the chance for the love of my children, because that's really the only real love that I've ever had. Gideon's half -brother, he had been serving as a sergeant in the U .S. Air Force in Japan, and he ends up moving back home after this decision and and the second trial, and he adopts these kids. um Robert Kennedy also has a little quote about Gideon and ah RFK was a huge deal, legally speaking. In 1963, he said that if an obscure Florida convict named Clarence Earl Gideon had not sat down in prison with a pencil and paper to write a letter to the Supreme Court, and if the Supreme Court had not taken the trouble to look at the merits in that one crude petition among all the bundles of mail it must receive every day, the vast machinery of American law would have gone on functioning undisturbed. But Gideon did write that letter. The court did look into his case. He was retried with the help of competent defense counsel, found not guilty, and released from prison after two years of punishment for a crime he did not commit. And the whole course of legal history has been changed. It's interesting
Speaker: ah Looking at this case and like how Huge an impact it's had on the American criminal justice system. I Used to use this for part of a thing that like the story I would tell I would talk about getting versus Wayne, right? And I'm I realized something in the course of doing this. Have you ever watched this a wonderful life? Yes so the guardian angel that George has in It's a Wonderful Life. His name is Clarence. And so that's 20 years ahead of time for this to have been named after him. But I think it's an app description to call Clarence Gideon.
Speaker: a guardian angel for like indigent defendants, defendants in general, honestly. I just found that to be and a really apropos kind of reference for you know this type of series. Well, I would agree with that. It's interesting to me that what he did was so simple, right? Yeah.
Speaker: It was basically just saying, hey, like everybody who's facing this situation should have confident legal representation. The Sixth Amendment says it, and that applies to us through the Fourteenth Amendment. Why is no one understanding this? Right? Right.
Speaker: And so, you know, it's really easy when you're standing in a position, like I would say he was then from at least now. Like I don't know that everybody would realize that then. I mean, clearly the judge was like, no, you don't get an attorney, right right? So I don't know what the disconnect there was, but now we would all know that. Like nobody would take that as an answer now, right? right because of this case so to me when there's something like so incredibly applicable to like everybody which is when you're going to go to jail you need to at least make sure it's done fairly right oh yeah i feel like that bolstered his ability to do this it's so
Speaker: Interesting, though, to me that, like, it was this, you know, sort of transient, petty criminal who stood up for himself, right? I mean, he didn't get anything out of the... He didn't get anything except a hard time out of this situation. I mean, he'd been accused of the crime, and it's not like he achieved any sort of fame or fortune, because you could ask people today why you get an attorney. Nobody knows. I mean,
Speaker: attorneys might know, right? Some legal scholars might know that it has to do with Clarence Girl Gideon. I think they know the holding, but I don't think they know the story. Well, right. But he ultimately, and because of the way it happened, and and it makes sense because, you know, he's literally saying, Hey, I didn't get an attorney. And now he's presenting, hey, I didn't get an attorney to the Supreme Court. He literally did it himself, right? And it's amazing. it's it's a It's amazing that he had the wherewithal and the stamina and the backbone to do this under the circumstances, and yet he did.
Speaker: He did. Yeah. And I, you know, I thought this would, I thought this would be a good, better, nostalgic, feel good Christmas story. Cause like a lot of the stories that we cover for home for the holidays are honestly kind of tragic for different reasons. This one, I feel like it's made especially wholesome by the fact that like he gets off at the second trial after this massive holding that's going to affect everybody to this day. I mean, so this happens in 62 that's gonna be 38 plus, two yeah, the worst're we're we're almost now 60 some years out from this, right? 60, 24 plus 38 is what?
Speaker: sixty two but So, yeah, we're 62 years out from this case, having been decided. And obviously, he has long passed away. After the acquittal, Clarence Gideon, he went back to the way that he had lived before. He got married for the fifth time. And in January of 1972, at the age of 61, he passed away.
Speaker: He was buried in an unmarked grave by his family, and the American Civil Liberties Union eventually added a granite headstone acknowledging his passing. Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabratiCreations .com. If you have a moment in your favorite app, please go on and give us a review or a five -star rating. It helps us get noticed in the crowd. This is True Crime XS.
Speaker: I'll be singing, you'll be making plans
Speaker: One day it will be my baby and me
Speaker: True Crime XS is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon dot .com, or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess .com. Thank you for joining us.
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