{"id":13255,"date":"2013-04-05T08:13:30","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T12:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=13255"},"modified":"2013-04-05T08:15:51","modified_gmt":"2013-04-05T12:15:51","slug":"a-portent-of-gideon-v-wainwright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=13255","title":{"rendered":"A portent of Gideon v Wainwright"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision called Gideon<\/a> \u2014\u00a0<\/em>among lawyers, that’s the only name that needs to be murmured, and what a clarion name it is! \u2014 has produced many recent and beautiful pieces of writing.<\/p>\n

The best I can do in honor of Gideon<\/em> is to recognize a few of the essays I’ve read. Most of them tend, though, to be less celebrational than worried, such as, “The Right to Counsel: Badly Battered at 50,” by Lincoln Caplan (with a sad, moving photograph of Mr. Gideon’s cemetery marker)<\/a>, and “Gideon’s Muted Trumpet,” by Paul Butler<\/a>, both in the New York Times.<\/p>\n

For one thing, although Gideon guaranteed indigent criminal defendants a lawyer, as we all know painfully,<\/a> it didn’t guarantee an indigent defendant a diligent, competent<\/em> lawyer. And Gideon<\/em>‘s raveled guarantee depends on a disorderly quilt of federal, state and local legal aid organizations, underfinanced and overworked.<\/p>\n

True, some of the best lawyers I’ve known have worked for one version of legal aid or another, but then I come from a city with<\/em> some of the best lawyers in the country.<\/p>\n

So Gideon<\/em> isn’t perfect.<\/p>\n

Nor did Gideon<\/em> promise a lawyer to all people needy of legal advice but also needy of the funds to pay for that legal advice. I’ve linked a few articles on exactly that subject. Here’s one by Matthew Desmond, in the New York Times. <\/a><\/p>\n

What prompted me to write my own small, borrowed, delayed and imperfect salute to Mr. Gideon was this, from a elderly British mystery I was reading very late the other night. Gideon<\/em> was decided in 1963. Look at the publication date of this novel:<\/p>\n

“Has he any friends?”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Only your aunt, Mrs. Everett.”<\/em><\/p>\n

And who will pay for his defense?”<\/em><\/p>\n

Grant explained.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Then he can’t have any of the good ones. That doesn’t seem to me particularly fair – for the law to keep famous lawyers to do their prosecuting and not famous lawyers to defend poor criminals.”‘<\/em><\/p>\n

Grant grinned. “Oh, he’ll have a fair deal, don’t you worry. It is the police who are harried round in a murder case.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Did you never, in all your experience, know a case where the law made a mistake?”<\/em><\/p>\n

“Yes, several,” Grant admitted cheerfully. “But they were all cases of mistaken identity. And that’s not in question here.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“No; but there must be case where the evidence is nothing but a lot of things that have nothing to do with each other put together until they look like something. Like a patchwork bedcover.”<\/em><\/p>\n

From The Man in the Queue,<\/em> by Josephine Tey (1953)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision called Gideon \u2014\u00a0among lawyers, that’s the only name that needs to be murmured, and what a clarion name it is! \u2014 has produced many recent and beautiful pieces of writing. The best … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[337],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t