The Bay Harbor Pool Room (a pool hall/bar) in Pensacola, Florida was broken into on June 3, 1961. The offenders broke a window and opened a door and entered the bar, robbing the bar. $5 change and a few bottles of beer and soda. Clarence Earl Gideon was arrested shortly thereafter in a tavern. A nearby resident, Henry Cook, claimed to have seen Gideon leave the bar with a bottle of wine and pockets full of coins, make a phone call, get into a taxi and leave. Gideon denied the allegations (Wikipedia, 2013). Gideon was born in Hannibal Missouri on August 30, 1910. After completing the eighth grade, he ran away from home and began a life as a drifter. By the age of sixteen he had filled out a petty crime profile and spent a year in a reformatory for burglary before finding work in a shoe factory. At the age of eighteen, Missouri police arrested Gideon for robbery, burglary, and theft. The court sentenced him to ten years in prison but he served only 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 stealing government property, in Texas for theft and again in Missouri for theft, larceny and escape. Between one sentence and another he managed to marry four times; he had six children, he managed to stay out of prison until his arrest in 1961. Given his criminal record and proximity to the pool hall, Gideon was the perfect suspect for this crime (Wikipedia, 2013). that the court appoint him a lawyer. His trial judge Robert McCrary, Jr. denied this request. Under Florida state law, the court could appoint an attorney for an indigent defendant only in capital cases....... middle of the paper... eon wrote that letter; the court heard his case; was retried with the help of a competent attorney; found not guilty and released from prison after 2 years of punishment for a crime he did not commit. And the entire course of legal history has been changed. (Wikipedia, 2013, para. 16)Conclusion50 years have passed since the Gideon v. Wainwright. From drifter, to petty criminal, to the Supreme Court, Gideon opened doors for the poor man in the system. Because of this case, indigent defendants have access to an attorney (public defenders) if they demonstrate that they cannot afford an attorney on their own. Works CitedOyez. (2013, December 3). Gideon vs. Wainwright. Retrieved from Oyez: http:www.oyez.org/cases/1960-1969/1962/1962_155Wikipedia. (2013). Clarence Count Gideon. Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Earl_Gideon