Clarence Earl Gideon (August 30, 1910 – January 18, 1972) was a poor drifter accused in a Florida state court of felony breaking and entering. While in prison, he appealed his case to the US Supreme Court, resulting in the landmark 1963 decision Gideon v. Wainwright holding that a criminal defendant who cannot afford to hire a lawyer must be provided one at no cost. At Gideon's first trial in August 1961, he was denied legal counsel and was forced to represent himself, and was convicted. After the Supreme Court ruled in Gideon that the state had to provide defense counsel in criminal cases at no cost to the indigent, Florida retried Gideon. At his second trial, which took place in August 1963, with a court-appointed lawyer representing him and bringing out for the jury the weaknesses in the prosecution's case, Gideon was acquitted. Early life Clarence Earl Gideon was born in Hannibal, Missouri. His father, Charles Roscoe Gideon, died when he was three. His mother, Virginia Gregory Gideon, married Marrion Anderson shortly after. Gideon, after years of defiant behavior and chronic truancy, quit school after eighth grade, aged 14, and ran away from home, becoming a homeless drifter. By the time he was sixteen, Gideon had begun compiling a petty crime profile. He 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 for theft. Between his prison terms, Gideon was married four times. The first three marriages 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 because of his low wages. He did not serve more time