Lawsuits hold up Hawaii election certification

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. On this day of thanksgiving, I am thankful that handwritten complaints can be filed with our

legal system.

Gideon v. Wainwright

Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), is a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court unanimously held that in criminal cases states are required under the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to provide an attorney to defendants who are unable to afford their own attorneys. The case extended the right to counsel, which had been found under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to impose requirements on the federal government, by imposing those requirements upon the states as well.

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Background

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Gideon first filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Supreme Court of Florida. In his petition, he claimed his Sixth Amendment right had been violated because the judge refused to appoint counsel. The Florida Supreme Court denied Gideon’s petition. After, from his cell at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, making use of the prison library and writing in pencil on prison stationery, Gideon appealed to the United States Supreme Court in a suit against the Secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections, H. G. Cochran. Cochran later retired and was replaced with Louie L. Wainwright before the case was heard by the Supreme Court. Gideon argued in his appeal that he had been denied counsel and, therefore, his Sixth Amendment rights, as applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, had been violated.

The Supreme Court assigned Gideon a prominent Washington, D.C., attorney, future Supreme Court justice Abe Fortas of the law firm Arnold, Fortas & Porter. Bruce Jacob, who later became Dean of the Mercer University School of Law and Dean of Stetson University College of Law, argued the case for Florida. Fortas was assisted by longtime Arnold, Fortas & Porter partner Abe Krash and future famed legal scholar John Hart Ely, then a third-year student at Yale Law School.

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The first page of Gideon's handwritten petition for a writ of certiorari to the US Supreme Court.

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