Gideon's Trumpet (30 page)

Turner: “Have you ever denied being convicted of a felony?”

Cook: “Yes, sir.”

Turner: “When and where did you deny your criminal record?”

Cook: “Right here—at his last trial.”

On redirect examination Harris got Cook to say he had not understood the question about a felony at the first trial. Turner moved to strike this testimony, saying “I don’t think this should go to the jury with any excuses or any embellishments.… I don’t care if he’s ignorant of the law or I am, that still doesn’t change the spots on the leopard. He’s a convicted felon.” Judge McCrary let Cook’s explanation stand, but Turner had made the score he wanted—impressing the jury with Cook’s record.

The prosecution’s second witness was the man who had operated the Bay Harbor Poolroom, Ira Strickland, Jr., twenty-nine years old, growing bald. He was no longer in the poolroom business; now he was a stock clerk. Questioning him, State Attorney Adams went into much greater detail about the poolroom and Gideon’s relationship to it than at the first trial. Had Gideon worked for Strickland? “Never on the payroll,” but he had helped out sometimes.

“Was he authorized to be in the poolroom on the morning of the third day of June, 1961?”

“No.”

On cross-examination Turner asked whether others had not operated the poolroom for Strickland.

“Occasionally.”

“Even this defendant, Gideon, operated it sometimes, didn’t he?”

“Well, occasionally.” There was no further explanation.

Turner pressed Strickland to say exactly what he missed from the poolroom when he arrived that morning, but Strickland said he could not be precise.

“Are you sure there was money in that cigarette machine [the night before]?”

“Yes.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I bought a pack myself.”

Shortly before noon Judge McCrary recessed the trial for lunch. Afterward the state called the detective who had arrested Gideon in 1961. Duell Pitts was a square-faced, handsome man, thirty-seven years old, wearing a sports jacket and salmon-colored tie. Like the other prosecution witnesses, he seemed to have no animus toward Gideon; indeed he spoke rather gently of him. On direct examination he testified that he had been called by the policeman who
discovered the break-in, was given Gideon’s name at the scene by Cook, and arrested Gideon in a downtown Panama City bar the same morning.

Under cross-examination Pitts produced his notes of what Strickland had told him was missing from the poolroom that morning: four fifths of wine, twelve bottles of Coca-Cola, twelve cans of beer, about five dollars from the cigarette machine and sixty dollars from the juke box. Then Turner asked a question that boomeranged: “When you arrested Clarence Earl Gideon that morning, how much money did he have on him?”

Pitts answered, “Twenty-five dollars and twenty-eight cents in quarters, nickels, dimes and a few pennies.”

On redirect, that damning point was re-emphasized: “This twenty-five dollars and twenty-eight cents—he had no bills?”

“Not that I remember.”

Preston Bray, the cab driver who was called by Gideon the morning of the crime and drove him downtown, testified that Gideon had paid him six quarters. He said that Gideon had told him: “If anyone asks you where you left me off, you don’t know; you haven’t seen me.” But on cross-examination he said Gideon had told him the same thing on other occasions.

“Do you know why?”

“I understand it was his wife—he had trouble with his wife.” There were these further exchanges between Turner and Bray:

Q: “What was his condition as to sobriety?”

A: “What’s that?”

Q: “Was he drunk or sober?”

A: “He was sober.”

Q: “Did he have any wine on him?”

A: “No, sir.”

Q: “Any beer?”

A: “No, sir.”

Q: “Any Coca Cola?”

A: “No, sir.”

Q: “Did his pockets bulge?”

A: “No, sir.”

That was the prosecution’s case. The jury was sent out; and then Turner moved for a directed verdict of acquittal, arguing that the evidence went only to show Gideon in the poolroom, not breaking into it. Judge McCrary listened politely and then said without hesitation: “The motion will be denied. Call the jury back.”

Turner produced a surprise defense witness who had never appeared in the case before. He was J.D. Henderson, owner of the grocery in Bay Harbor. Between eight and nine on the morning of June 3, 1961, Henderson said, Henry Cook had come into his store and told the grocer that “the law had picked him up for questioning” about the break-in.

“Picked who up?” Turner asked with an air of mock disbelief.

“Henry Cook.”

Henderson said Cook had told him about seeing someone in the poolroom but was “not sure who it was. He said, ‘It looked like Mr. Gideon.’ ” If such a statement had been made by Cook, it was much less positive than his subsequent testimony.

On cross-examination Harris asked whether Henderson had ever had “any trouble with Henry Cook.”

“No.”

“Does he owe you any money?”

“He owes a grocery bill, forty-one dollars, for almost a year.”

The second and last witness for the defense was Clarence Earl Gideon.

Q: “On the morning of June 3, 1961, did you break and enter the Bay Harbor Poolroom?”

A: “No, sir.”

Q: “What was the purpose of your going into town?”

A: “To get me another drink.”

Q: “Where’d you get the money?”

A: “I gambled.”

Q: “What kind of games?”

A: “Mostly rummy.”

Q: “Did you ever gamble with Henry Cook?”

A: “Sure, I gambled with all those boys.”

Q: “Did you have any wine with you?”

A: “I don’t drink wine.”

Q: “Any beer? Any Coke?”

A: “No.”

Q: “What did you purchase in town?”

A: “I didn’t purchase nothin’ except somethin’ to drink.”

Q: “That’s what I mean. What did you purchase to drink?”

A: “Four or five beers, and I bought a half-pint of vodka.”

Q: “What do you say to this charge that you broke and entered the pool hall?”

A: “I’m not guilty of it—I know nothing about it.”

On cross-examination, Harris asked where Gideon was employed at the time. “I wasn’t employed. I was gambling.” There was a long exploration of when Gideon had last held a regular job. He had painted some rooms at the Bay Harbor Hotel and was given free rent (a $6-a-week room) in exchange. He had run poker games for Strickland in the poolroom. There followed some questions about gambling that Gideon answered with a puzzled air, as if bewildered at Harris’s failure to understand.

Q: “Why did you have all that money in coins?”

A: “I’ve had as much as one hundred dollars in my pockets in coins.”

Q: “Why?”

A: “Have you ever run a poker game?”

Q: “You would carry one hundred dollars in coins around for a couple of days at a time?”

A: “Yes sir, I sure wouldn’t leave it in a room in the Bay Harbor Hotel.”

Q: “Did you play rummy that night?”

A: “No—I was too busy drinking.”

Q: “Have you ever been convicted or pled guilty to a felony?”

A: “Yes, five times, including this one.”

At two-forty
P.M
. the testimony was all in. Judge McCrary recessed the trial and called the lawyers and Gideon into his chambers to discuss how he should charge the jury. The lawyers wrangled for half an hour, ending with a squabble over how much time they would have for closing arguments. Judge McCrary settled this by allowing each side forty-five minutes; as it turned out, neither used that much.

In his address to the jury Turner was the model of the practiced criminal lawyer—dramatic but not too dramatic. His whole argument focused on Henry Cook.

“This probationer,” he said scornfully, “has been out at a dance drinking beer.… He does a peculiar thing [when he supposedly sees Gideon inside the poolroom]. He doesn’t call the police, he doesn’t notify the owner, he just walks to the corner and walks back [as Cook had testified].… What happened to the beer and the wine and the Cokes? I’ll tell you—it left there in that old model Chevrolet. The beer ran out at midnight in Apalachicola.… Why was Cook walking back and forth? I’ll give you the explanation: He was the lookout.”

Having accused Cook and his friends of actually committing the crime, Turner turned to the defendant.

“Gideon’s a gambler,” he said, “and he’d been drinking whiskey. I submit to you that he did just what he said that morning—he walked out of his hotel and went to that telephone booth [to call the cab].… Cook saw him, and here was a perfect answer for Cook. He names Gideon.”

For the state, Assistant Prosecutor Griffith had made a straightforward closing argument, summarizing the testimony without dramatics. Now, in rebuttal to Turner, Harris got a little more folksy.

“Twenty-five dollars’ worth of change,” he said, “that’s a lot to carry in your pocket. But Mr. Gideon carried one hundred dollars’ worth of change in his pocket.” He paused and raised his eyebrows. “Do you believe that? … There’s been no evidence here of any animosity by Cook toward Gideon. There’s no evidence here that Cook and his friends took this beer and wine.”

The jury went out at four-twenty
P.M
., after a colorless charge by the judge including the instruction—requested by Turner—that the jury must believe Gideon guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt” in order to convict him. When a halfhour had passed with no verdict, the prosecutors were less confident. At five twenty-five there was a knock on the door between the courtroom and the jury room. The jurors filed in, and the court clerk read their verdict, written on a form. It was
Not Guilty
.

“So say you all?” asked Judge McCrary, without a flicker of emotion. The jurors nodded.

Judge McCrary had written of Gideon’s first trial: “In my opinion he did as well as most lawyers could have done in handling his case.” But Gideon had not done as well as Fred Turner. He had none of Fred Turner’s training, or his talent, or his knowledge of the community. Nor could he
prepare the case as Turner had, because he had been in prison before his trial.

Turner had spent three full days before trial interviewing witnesses and exploring the case. He went out in the backyard and picked pears with Cook’s mother to see what he could find out about the prosecution’s star witness. Actually, Turner already knew a good deal about Cook because he had twice been Cook’s lawyer—a coincidence that was not a great surprise in a small town like Panama City, where part of a lawyer’s job is to know everyone. He had represented Cook in a divorce action and defended him successfully against a charge of leading a drunk out of the Bay Harbor Poolroom, beating him up and robbing him of $1.98. Gideon’s insistence on having a local lawyer—Fred Turner—may well have won the case for him. It is doubtful that the Civil Liberties Union lawyers from Miami could have been so effective with a Panama City jury.

After nearly two years in the state penitentiary Gideon was a free man. There were tears in his eyes, and he trembled even more than usual as he stood in a circle of well-wishers and discussed his plans. His half-brother, the Air Force sergeant, was coming home from Japan and would adopt Gideon’s children. Gideon would see the children the next day, then go off to stay with a friend in Tallahassee. That night he would pay a last, triumphant visit to the Bay Harbor Poolroom. Could someone let him have a few dollars? Someone did.

“Do you feel like you accomplished something?” a newspaper reporter asked.

“Well I did.”

The following are mainly source notes. They generally follow legal methods of citation, which may need a word of explanation.
Betts v. Brady
, 316 U.S. 455, 462 (1942), means that the Supreme Court decided the case in 1942 and that the opinions begin at page 455 of volume 316 of the
United States Reports
, the official volumes of the Court’s decisions; the particular passage quoted or mentioned is at page 462. In the early years the reports bore the name of the editor, such as Cranch or Wheaton or Howard:
Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee
, 1 Wheaton 304 (1816). Federal statutes are cited by title and section in the United States Code, the compendium of federal laws; 28 U.S.C. 1915 (a) means Title 28 of the code, section 1915(a). Articles in law reviews are cited by author, title, the volume and name of the review, page and date: Schaefer,
Federalism and State Criminal Procedure
, 70 Harv. L. Rev. 1, 25
(1956). Books are cited by author, title, page and year of publication: Freund,
The Supreme Court of the United States
47 (1961). The author’s full name and further details of publication are given in the list of suggested readings.