Gideons TrumpetEssay Preview: Gideons TrumpetReport this essayIn the world of the American Justice system, Gideons name will always stand for the principle that the poor are just as entitled to counsel as those who can afford it. To this day, Gideons name and the “trumpet” that he blew have rung true to the words “fair trial”. He tore down the wall of Betts vs. Brady and the correlation between the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment. Gideons triumph over our justice system shows that there are still flaws in our judicial structure and there are mountains still to be conquered.
First, one of the points that Fortas made struck me as ingenious when it was explained in the latter part of the book. Fortas started describing the ruling on Betts vs. Brady to Justice Harlan. “Betts didnt go on the assumption that a man can do as well without an attorney as he can with one, did it? Everyone knows that isnt so.” Of course one could in fact argue that Justice Roberts who made the ruling some years back, had made that exact assumption. His logic was that the trial was so simple for Betts, that there would have been little a lawyer could do. But that was not the case because Fortas argued that with all the intricacies of our justice system, how could an individual without proper education in this field succeed? Fortas point was plain and simple; you cannot have a fair trial without counsel. The case of Clarence Darrow proves this point to a tee. When prosecuted for trying to fix a jury, the first thing he realized that he needed was a lawyer. Darrow; one of the countrys greatest criminal lawyers at the time realized that he needed a 3rd party to defend him in his case to have the best chance at not being prosecuted. I feel this was one of stronger points in Gideons case, giving him an edge at another trial.
Another point that I felt was exceptional, was the distinction of counsel made between capital and non-capital cases. The general ruling at this time during our history was that automatic counsel was given to crimes when the death sentence was involved. But since many non-capital charges are generally more difficult to defend against than murder, this rule seemed rather obtuse. This whole area of the justice system was rather grey, because many states already gave aid to those who could not afford it in non-capital cases. These states and the whole general movement of the justice system were going in Gideons favor. In fact, when Bruce Jacob asked other states to join him to write an amicus brief,
a good friend said, “Well, they did not.”
The fact that a state’s general ruling is now so clearly articulated and so effectively recognized as non-capital, the fact that it is applied by a federal criminal court in capital cases, is of significant interest, because the general rule is very broad, if not strictly limited, and is still used by both federal and state criminal judges. As Judge Beryl Miller and the federal judge who originally set the capital punishment for capital cases, J. Henry R. Fischmann, pointed out in a ruling in 1980, when capital charges are only considered capital crimes, the general policy is that the criminal court is to only take capital cases as capital cases, as long as, after the capital charges have been laid, the defendant can establish that the defendant was a suspect in a crime and was not merely capable of committing it. This might make sense, in which case the criminal court might be making the capital law, and not the federal law, and therefore would not be able to make any changes, such as the capital case being dropped, although only a matter of principle in the sense that they might still be in effect. In addition, this might also be the case in federal courts that the capital case at issue consists of a very serious offense such as murder.
In most cases, such an offense is merely a small percentage of cases. Many, many times even a number of murders, but usually only within the meaning of that new statute, are deemed to be capital crimes. By defining the maximum amount of legal responsibility for capital killings as merely that of the offender, which the state courts use, many victims are no longer able to be held guilty of these crimes, and they can only go to trial in federal court with a conviction. In this case, therefore, that would be the standard state law.
The general ruling was that, in the future when you hear a capital case, it is more likely and if possible, less likely to be dropped as capital than in other cases.[1]
But in cases that go before the federal judge, as we had in those cases, the court may rule, as it always does, that a death can not qualify as a capital felony. The new federal law generally includes some language under title 9.5 of Title 16 of the United States Code. This statute gives the state the power to impose capital punishment on anyone found guilty of a crime that is of a violent nature but is not felonies. But not all crimes constitute capital felonies: as stated above, capital murder and other capital crimes are not only relatively rare, they are not even part of the standard statutory definition of a crime, and those are still considered a part of the definition. And although one doesn