Gideons Trumpet

Gideon\'s Trumpet

In Gideon's Trumpet Anthony Lewis documents Clarence Earl Gideon's struggle for a lawyer, during an era where it was not necessary in the due process to appoint an attorney to those convicted. Anthony Lewis was born in New York City on March 27th, 1927. As a prominent liberal, Lewis is responsible for several legal works such as, Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment, The Supreme Court and How It Works: The Story of the Gideon Case, and Portrait of a Decade: The Second American Revolution. Early in his career, Lewis began writing for the New York Times. Considered at \"the far left of the spectrum\" he is quite biased with regards to how much involvement the Supreme Court should have in our day-to-day lives. Generally, those who are liberal wish to change laws favoring the citizen, and obviously this carried over into Lewis's pro-stance towards Gideon's plea. The source that Lewis uses frequently throughout Gideon's Trumpet was the United States Reports. It was from these "reports" that Lewis incorporated other famous court cases such as the Bett v. Brady case. Others such as Adamson v. California and Powell v. Alabama were used but were mentioned briefly and barely explained. Lewis did an medicore job of incorporating these court cases relevant

ly to Gideon's Trumpet. In Gideon's Trumpet, Anthony Lewis documents steps that Gideon took to ensure he received justice. This began when Gideon first sent a respondence letter to the Supreme Court on Janurary 8th, 1962. This letter followed in forma pauperis which means since Gideon was too poor to pay the traditional fees, his petition could be handwritten (instead of typed) and then reviewed by the Clerk's office. In these letters Gideon exclaimed that he was "illegally imprisoned", due to the fact he was not represented in court by an attorney. He argued that even though he was a poor man a lawyer should have been appointed to his case. Gideon had followed the initial requirement that his case was brought to the Supreme court's attention within ninety days of his preliminary trial. He also mailed in a copy of his application for this petiton to a lower Florida court and evidence that the motion was denied. However, his main submission to the Sumpreme Court was a lenghthy five-page document that included a writ of certiorari--the wish to move his case to the Supreme Court from a lower court. Gideon had found his first hole between federal and state courts. This hole says that the Supreme Court has no power to "revise the decisions of the state courts." However, when state courts decide issues of federal law, the Supreme Court has the power to review state court decisions. In this way Gideon's case was finally noticed. I believe Lewis accomplished his goal of informing the public about how the due process was altered through the efforts of one couragous man--Clarence Earl Gideon. Lewis completed a detailed novel that was filled with legal cases that helped Gideon accomplish his goal. Although Lewis related previous court cases to Gideon's lawsuit, the court cases he used seemed to have little relevance

to Gideon's