Clarence Earl Gideon

Clarence Earl Gideon was born in Hannibal, Missouri. His father, Charles Roscoe Gideon, died within days of his third birthday. His mother, Virginia Gregory Gideon, married Marion Francis Anderson in 1915. She gave birth to Gideon’s half-sister, Frances Marie Anderson, in 1917 and Gideon’s half-brother, Russell Lee Anderson, in 1930.

Gideon’s earliest memory was of his mother’s marriage to his stepfather, whom he described as a "good man." Both of his parents worked in a shoe factory. They owned their own home, which Gideon understood his mother bought with his father’s life insurance. Gideon felt his parents lived by the “best moral customs.” They were members of Calvary Baptist Church in Hannibal, which Gideon also joined when he was about 13.

Gideon wrote that his “stepfather never could accept me or I could not accept him.” He described his mother as “very strict” while, in contrast, he described himself as an "individualist" or “a person who will not conform.” He remembered his parents were “always quarrelling,” and that he was “the scapegoat of those quarrels.” He felt his life as a child was “miserable” and that he was not allowed to do what ordinary boys did. Gideon attended public school in Hannibal. He wrote that he “never had any trouble and made my grades” up to the eighth grade.

At age 14, Gideon quit school, ran away and "accepted the life of a hobo and tramp in preference to my home.” He "wandered around" California and the west for almost a year, learning “how good people can be and how bad they can be.”

Upon returning to Missouri, Gideon moved in with his mother’s brother. When found by his mother, she had him placed in the Hannibal jail. He soon escaped and hid in the country. The weather being cold, he stole clothes from a country store. The next day, the store owner caught Gideon wearing the stolen items. He was sentenced to three years in the reformatory but was paroled after serving one year. Late in his life, he said that “[of] all the prisons I have been in that was the worst” and that he was still physically scarred from the “whippings” he received there.

Back in Hannibal at age 16, Gideon went to work at the shoe factory for two dollars per day, advancing to a piece work job making about 25 dollars a week. Soon thereafter, he married a girl his age. …

At age 18, Gideon was arrested in Missouri and charged with robbery, burglary, and larceny. Gideon was sentenced to 10 years but released after three, in 1932, as the Great Depression was beginning.

Gideon spent most of the next three decades in poverty. He served additional prison terms at Leavenworth, Kansas, for stealing government property; in Missouri for stealing, larceny, and escape; and in Texas three times for theft.

Gideon's first, second and third marriages all ended quickly, but the fourth to Ruth Ada Babineaux in October 1955 endured. They settled in Orange, Texas, in the mid-1950s. Gideon found irregular work as a tugboat laborer and bartender until he was bedridden by tuberculosis for three years.

In addition to the three children that Ruth already had, Gideon and Ruth had three others, born in 1956, 1957, and 1959: the first two in Orange, the third after the family had moved to Panama City, Florida. The six children were later removed by welfare authorities. Gideon worked as an electrician in Florida but began gambling for money. He did not serve more time in jail until 1961.

On June 3, 1961, someone allegedly stole $50 (equivalent to $539 in 2025) from the jukebox at the Bay Harbor Pool Room in Panama City, along with $5 in change and a few bottles of beer and Coca-Cola. Henry Cook, a 22-year-old resident who lived nearby, told the police that he had seen Gideon walk out of the bar with a bottle of wine and his pockets filled with coins, and then get into a cab. Gideon was later arrested at a tavern.

Too poor to afford counsel, Gideon was forced to defend himself at his trial after being denied a lawyer by the trial judge, Robert McCrary Jr. At the time, Florida law only gave indigent defendants no-cost legal counsel in death penalty cases. On August 4, 1961, Gideon was convicted of breaking with intent to commit petty larceny, and on August 25, Judge McCrary gave Gideon the maximum sentence, five years in state prison.

While incarcerated, Gideon studied the American legal system. He concluded that Judge McCrary had violated his constitutional right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, applicable to Florida through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He then wrote to an FBI office in Florida and then to the Florida Supreme Court, but was denied assistance. In January 1962, he mailed a five-page petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States, asking the nine justices to consider his case. The Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal. The case was originally called Gideon v. Cochran and was argued on January 15, 1963. Gideon v. Cochran was changed to Gideon v. Wainwright after Louie L. Wainwright replaced H. G. Cochran as the director of the Florida Department of Corrections.

Abe Fortas (later a Supreme Court justice himself) was assigned to represent Gideon. Florida Assistant Attorney General Bruce Jacob was assigned to argue against Gideon. …

After his acquittal, Gideon resumed his previous way of life and later married for the fifth time. He died of cancer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on January 18, 1972, at age 61. Gideon's family had him buried in an unmarked grave in Hannibal. In 1984, the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union added a granite headstone. Engraved on the stone is a line from Gideon's 1962 letter to Abe Fortas: "I believe that each era finds an improvement in law for the benefit of mankind."

Gideon was portrayed by Henry Fonda in the 1980 made-for-television film Gideon's Trumpet, based on Anthony Lewis' book of the same name. The film was the first telecast as part of the Hallmark Hall of Fame anthology series, and co-starred José Ferrer as Abe Fortas, the attorney who pleaded Gideon's right to have a lawyer in the US Supreme Court. Fonda was nominated for an Emmy Award for his portrayal of Gideon.