Gideon's Trumpet Movie Review

2 Pages 472 Words

Gideon’s trumpet was an interesting movie. This movie was made in 1980. The court case that is shown in this movie is Gideon v. Wainwright. This case established the right to legal representation in criminal trials.
Playing the part of Clarence Earl Gideon as a very stubborn not too well educated man from Florida, a four-time loser who managed to get the attention of the U.S. Supreme Court was Henry Fonda. The Florida penitentiary to which he is sentenced for five years for a crime the he did not commit is shown as a sort of summer camp for adult men. I'm pretty sure that the real “summer camp” was a night mare compared to the one that was showed in the movie.
In the movie Gideon goes about his work as a mechanic and looks for law books in the prison library. His hand-written appeal to the Supreme Court for having been refused legal counsel by a judge who was following Florida law at the time is read and the court decides to hear the case and consider giving him legal counsel.
The person that represented Gideon in his appeal and wanted to make the right to counsel was future Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, who is played by José Ferrer. When a Florida attorney who has never argued a case to the U.S. Supreme Court appears before, Fortas notices that the man was having a hard time defending himself against a lawyer; but this time he was more experienced than he had been before.
The court voted to overturn the conviction. Gideon who had already served two years in prison for a breaking and entering crime that he did not commit is not happy to have an effect in the U.S. Supreme Court and stubbornly believes that it is "double jeopardy" to try him again. I guess that this shows that his self-education in the law remained non appropriate even if his petition was granted by the highest court.
The judge from his earlier trial lets him have the lawyer that he wants, a ver...