The O.J. Verdict

Ten years after the California court found O.J. Simpson not guilty on two counts of murder, Frontline's documentary team took a look at the divided nature of responses to the verdict.   A compelling review of the decisions made by the trial teams provide a forum in which to move beyond the question of whether Simpson was guilty or innocent of the murder, to how our justice system as a part of our larger culture deals with what Alan Dershowitz called "a perfect storm" of factors that catapulted this case into a national and world-wide media frenzy.

The Gideon v. Wainwright decision overturned a previous ruling in Betssv. Brady. My research was about this case, as it was never explained in the documentary.

Betts v. Brady was a case in which Betts was indicted for robbery in Maryland. He requested legal counsel but was denied by the judge. He filed a writ of habeas corpus to the Circuit Court for Washington Cty., Maryland, and to the Maryland Court of Appeals, both of which were also denied. He then took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, who also rejected his claim. The ruling was 6-3. I found this case interesting because it seems to me that the facts and processes of this case and Gideon were almost identical, yet int this case, Betts did not win. It goes to show that the opinions of the Justices can be very different through the passage of time.

Clarence Earl Gideon and the Right to Counsel

Please post your information on the Gideon case here.

In 1961 in the state of Florida, Clarence Earl Gideon was sent to prison for five years after a trial in which he was not represented by counsel, having no money to hire an attorney himself. From that first trial on, Gideon insisted that the he had the right to have counsel appointed for him under the provisions of the United States Constitution.  In 1963, in the case of Gideon v Wainwright, the United States Supreme Court agreed and overruled the case of Betts v Brady which had limited the conditions under which a defendant accused of a felony had to have counsel appointed.   As Robert F. Kennedy later noted:

"If an obscure Florida convict named Clarence Earl Gideon had not sat down in his prison cell . . . to write a letter to the Supreme Court . . . the vast machinery of American law would have gone on functioning undisturbed. But Gideon did write that letter, the Court did look into his case . . . and the whole course of American legal history has been changed."

Unit Two

This section will be focusing less on the characters, what we learn from them, and why this may be significant for our understanding of our legal system (implied or stated), and move more into that system as a process.  Who are the players?  What is their significance?  How do the various texts and visual representations of this complicate our understanding of the roles and limitations of the law?

More information to come on what the requirements will be for this unit.