We need more brave people like Clarence Earl Gideon. He single-handedly challenged a huge injustice all the way to the US Supreme Court and in the process changed the law of the entire country. "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," Robert Kennedy, then the U.S. attorney general, but Gideon did write that letter, he said. 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. I know of few better examples than that of a democratic principle in action." usnews.nbcnews/_news/2013/03/18/17330063-a-nobodys-legacy-how-a-semi-literate-ex-con-changed-the-legal-system ct.gov/ocpd/cwp/view.asp?a=4087&q=479204
Posted on: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 05:18:19 +0000