March 18 · This Day in America
Clarence Earl Gideon, a drifter with a fifth-grade education, was charged with breaking into a Florida pool hall. He asked the judge for a lawyer. The judge said no — Florida only appointed counsel in capital cases. Gideon defended himself, lost, and went to prison. From his cell he wrote the Supreme Court in pencil, on lined prison paper, arguing that the Constitution guaranteed him an attorney. On March 18, the Court agrees, unanimously. Justice Hugo Black writes that any person hauled into court who cannot afford a lawyer cannot be assured a fair trial without one. The promise is no longer abstract. From this day, in every state, if you are accused and cannot pay, the country must stand a lawyer beside you. One handwritten letter from a man with nothing rewrote the rules for everyone.
Source: www.uscourts.gov
Also on this day · 1990
Just after midnight, two men in police uniforms ring the side door of Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, claiming to answer a disturbance. They tie up the guards and spend 81 minutes lifting 13 works — a Vermeer, three Rembrandts, a Manet — worth over $500 million. It remains the largest art theft in history. The frames still hang on the walls, empty, exactly where Isabella decreed nothing could ever move. The art has never been found.
Source: www.fbi.gov
“Any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him.”Justice Hugo Black, Gideon v. Wainwright, 1963