For May we will read Gideon's Trumpet by Anthony Lewis.
"Gideon's Trumpet is the story of this extraordinary case, from the night of June 3, 1961, when the Bay Harbor Poolroom was robbed, to the moment that Clarence Earl Gideon walked out of the Panama City, Florida, Courthouse a free man, on August 5, 1963.
Gideon's plea to the United States Supreme Court was deceptively simple: he had been denied a lawyer at the time of his trial for burglary because he could not afford one. To most laymen this would seem to provide grounds for a new trial, but the fact is that until the Supreme Court heard Gideon's case, an indigent prisoner did not have the right to a lawyer in many state courts.
The case of Gideon v. Wainwright changed all that. The Supreme Court decided to hear Gideon's plea, and it appointed Abe Fortas, a noted Washington lawyer, to represent him."
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