Free Gideon's Trumpet by Anthony Lewis

of wine in his hand, make a telephone call at the street corner and get into a taxi that he had apparently called. After following Gideon to the telephone boothhe went back to the poolroom and “saw it had been broken into.” The front was off the cigarette machine, and its money box was lying on a pool table.
    That was the direct testimony, and it was damaging. Then, briefly, Gideon attempted to cross-examine Cook. He asked what Cook was doing outside the poolroom at five-thirty in the morning. Cook said he had “just come from a dance, down in Apalachicola—stayed out all night”; and then this potentially interesting line of inquiry was dropped. Gideon asked whether Cook had ever been arrested, but the prosecutor’s objection to that question was sustained by Judge McCrary. Gideon was allowed to ask whether Cook had ever been convicted of a felony; Cook said no. The rest of the cross-examination was a meandering, argumentative affair that got nowhere. (Q: Do you know positively that I was carrying a pint of wine? A: Yes, I know you was. Q: How do you know that? A: Because I seen it in your hand.) Nothing further was brought out about Cook’s age, his occupation, his relationship with Gideon, his reputation—all areas that a lawyer would certainly have explored.
    There was only one other witness for the prosecution: Ira Strickland, Jr., operator of the Bay Harbor Poolroom. He testified that he had closed the place up at midnight on June 2, 1961, locking all doors and windows. When he returned the next morning at eight o’clock, he found the deputy sheriff; a window had been smashed, he said, and a cigarette machine and juke box broken into. Someone had taken coins from the two machines—Strickland said he did not know how much money was missing—and “a small amount of beer and some wine.” On cross-examination Gideon asked a number of questions about what the Bay Harbor Poolroom looked like, and the jury learned that it had a long bar down one side.
    Gideon had eight witnesses for the defense. Before they were called at his request, Judge McCrary warned him—without any real legal basis, so far as Fortas could tell—that “the witnesses you call are your witnesses, and it’s up to you to vouch for them. You understand that, do you?”
    Gideon answered, “Yes, sir, I understand it.”
    His first witness was the policeman who had discovered the break-in at the Bay Harbor Poolroom, Henry Berryhill, Jr. He said he had not been summoned by anyone—not, for example, by Cook—but had found the front door of the poolroom open on a routine patrol. He “checked with a fellow at the front of the building, a Mr. Cook, and … he said he saw you leave the building.” Gideon asked nothing further about what Berryhill thought Cook was doing “at the front of the building” at that hour. Berryhill testified that he had called the deputy sheriff, Duell Pitts, Jr., to investigate the break-in. After a few questions Berryhill was excused. Just why Gideon had called the policeman as a defense witness remained unclear.
    Deputy sheriff Pitts was next, and his status as a defense witness was just as obscure. He said Cook had seen Gideon in the building, and he was satisfied with that evidence of the crime. Then came the cab driver who had picked Gideon up on that morning of June 3rd, Preston Bray. Gideon had little to ask except whether he had seemed drunk that morning; he pressed Bray successfully to say no. (Actually, under Florida law intoxication would have been a defense to this crime; Gideon evidently did not know that, but a lawyer would have.) The prosecutor, on cross-examination, brought out that Bray had known Gideon for some time and asked whether Gideon was unemployed. Bray answered: “I know he was working at the poolroom—now, whether he was getting paid or not, I don’t know.” Thatwas significant, because Gideon could conceivably have had an excuse for being in the poolroom after closing if he was an