he said no and clarence earl gideon said while i am in titled to an attorney. the constitution guarantees my right to an attorney and the judge said no, it doesn't. you have to try yourself. the judge kindly coaxed gideon through the trial, but gideon lost and you know the laws are very complicated and going to court is very complicated and selecting a jury is very comp again. he kind of dump of a long and lost the case and was sent to prison from prison he hand wrote in pencil a semiliterate letter to the u.s. supreme court saying my right to an attorney has been violated. the supreme court had kind have been waiting for a case like this to come along. the timing was right. there had been several other cases that had come along that they had rejected and they accepted his case. in some ways it was interesting because they kind of stacked the deck in his favor by giving him an attorney who is this high-powered d.c. lawyer at the time. that was really to gideon's and at that and it was a sort of subtle thing from the u.s. supreme court to say we are really intere

who was clarence earl gideon, because as you point out in your book he was a somewhat unlikely figure to have made such an impact on history. >> guest: clarence earl gideon was an itinerant chap living down in florida, and he broke into a pool hall, was accused of breaking into a pool hall and accused of stealing some change from a jukebox, a couple beers and a bottle of wine and and arrested and brought to court there in florida and he approached the judge on the day of the trial and said i'm not ready to go to trial. i want an attorney and the judge said can you afford an attorney and he said no. and clarence earl gideon said well i am entitled to an attorney. the constitution guarantees my right to an attorney. the judge said no, it doesn't, you have to yourself. he coaxed him through the trial, but d-tn lost and was a fairly enact. infil walz are very complicated. selecting a jury is very complicated. he kind of bumbled along and lost his case and was sent to prison. from prison he had wrote in pencil a sort of semiliterate letter to the supreme court saying my right to an attorne

. >> clarence earl gideon was a free man. the man who won a landmark supreme court case went to live a normal living with a job pumping gas. >> when i read where it says equal justice under law, i'm very inspired by that. i'm very comforted by that. but i know a lot of people are treated unfairly. i see it as something encouraging but i don't see it yet. >> it's written into constitution and established into the goal for society to reach for and live up to. people will fall short, rights can be ignored or even trampled. with nothing more than a pencil and knowledge. >> if you know your rights you can protect your rights. if you don't know your rights you can't. they will always be there. you can fight for them. that was gideon's story. he knew he had a right that was taken way from him and he fought to get it back. >> if you are wondering how it is they had a televised proceeding of the gideon trial they reenacted it on television and they had gideon and the judges play themselves. now i would like to you meet chris kearney,

. >> his name is clarence earl gideon. he argued there could be no equal justice where the kind of trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has. he argued there should not be one kind of justice for the rich, another for the poor. gideon blew one note on his trumpet. he blew it over and over -- a man cannot get a fair trial without a lawyer. and because he would not retreat one wit from that position, this man, clarence gideon, has wrought a profound change in the course of american jurisprudence. >> gideon was a drifter with a criminal record, charged with breaking and entering and robbing a pool hall in florida. denied representation, he defended himself and was sentenced to five years in state prison. from his cell, he exercised his right to petition the supreme court for a fair hearing. when the justices ruled in gideon's favor, hundreds of prisoners who also had been denied their legal rights were freed or given new trials and our current system of public defenders was born. but 50 years later that system is