Clarence Earl Gideon's Trial

Clarence Earl Gideon was a man that was wrongfully convicted of a crime. Clarence had a bad background prior to the trial. His record prior was that he had felonies, and he was in jail for four times already, and he ran away from home, and was found with some stolen clothes on. His background didn’t make it easy for him to be found guilty. Gideon was accused of stealing wine, beer, money, and Coca Cola from the pool room. The charges that were brought to him was Petty theft. The evidence the state used against him was that he was seen by a witness breaking into the pool room. The sentencing that Gideon got was 5 years in a working prison. Gideon’s first trial was not in his favor, because he did not have a lawyer defending him, and he didn’t
know exactly what to do when defending himself, and he was not prepared with his questions. With the second trial he actually had a lawyer to defend them , and the lawyer actually knew what he was talking about he it came to defending Gideon. In the first trial the witness knew what exactly to say, and had his story together. In the second trial the witness was stuck, and wasn’t telling the story the same way that he told the story the first time. When Gideon’s lawyer started asking him question he was speechless, and when he was telling the story it wasn’t making any sense. For example; when Gideon’s lawyer said how could you have seen Gideon in the store when there are advertisement posters all on the window the witness said I looked thru the window, but the lawyer said how could you have seen him thru the window when the windows are way too high for you to see thru the window. This case proves that everyone should be entitled to a lawyer, because everybody doesn’t know what the rules are when defending someone or even just yourself. For example; when Gideon was defending himself he started to ask the witness questions and the prosecutor was like he was leading and because he wasn’t a lawyer or knew anything about it he didn’t he was leading. So that just proves he needed a lawyer and that everyone should be entitled to a lawyer, because not everybody knows how to defend themselves.