The Bay Harbor Pool Room (a pool hall/bar) in Pensacola, Florida was burglarized on June 3, 1961. The perpetrators broke a window, unlocked a door entering the bar, stealing the bar $5 in change and a few bottles of beer and soda. Clarence Earl Gideon was arrested shortly afterward at a tavern. A nearby resident, Henry Cook, claimed to have seen Gideon leave the bar with a bottle of wine and his pockets stuffed with coins, make a phone call, get into a taxi and leave. Gideon denied the accusations (Wikipedia, 2013). Gideon was born in Hannibal Missouri on August 30, 1910. After completing 8th grade, he ran away from home and began a life as a drifter. By the age of sixteen, he had developed a profile of petty crime and spent a year in a reformatory for burglary before finding work in a shoe factory. When he was eighteen, police in Missouri arrested Gideon for theft, burglary, and theft. The court sentenced him to ten years in prison, but he only served three. For the next thirty years he lived a life of poverty and crime. Gideon's criminal record included prison sentences in Leavenworth, Kansas, for theft of government property, in Texas for theft, and again in Missouri for theft, larceny, and escape. Between two prison sentences, he managed to marry four times; he had six children and managed to stay out of prison until his arrest in 1961. Given his criminal record and proximity to the pool hall, Gideon was the ideal suspect for this crime (Wikipedia, 2013).Original lawsuit Gideon appearing in court in Florida requested that the court appoint an attorney for him. Its trial judge, Robert McCrary, Jr., denied that request. Under Florida state law, the court could only appoint counsel for an indigent defendant in capital cases....... middle of paper ...... eon wrote this letter; the court actually looked into his case; he was retried with the assistance of a competent lawyer; found not guilty and released from prison after 2 years of sentence for a crime he did not commit. And the entire course of legal history has been modified. (Wikipedia, 2013, para. 16)ConclusionIt has been 50 years since Gideon v. Wainwright. From a drifter to a petty criminal to the Supreme Court, Gideon opened the doors to the system's poor. Through this case, indigent defendants have access to legal counsel (public defenders), if they prove they cannot afford an attorney on their own. Works Cited Oyez. (December 3, 2013). Gideon v. Wainwright. Extracted from Oyez: http:www.oyez.org/cases/1960-1969/1962/1962_155Wikipedia. (2013). Clarence Earl Gideon. Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Earl_Gideon