Chapter 5 Summary and Analysis

Fortas finds that opening and closing arguments are not recorded and the jury is not given any instruction regarding the requirements for determining Gideon's guilt before being released to deliberate. During the trial, the prosecution calls a man named Henry Cook who says that he saw Gideon in the poolroom at five-thirty on the morning of June 3, and that he had a bottle of wine in his hand. Cook says he saw Gideon go down the street, use a pay phone and leave in a cab. Then Cook realized that the "front was off the cigarette machine" and the moneybox empty. Gideon asks what Cook is doing out at that time of the morning and he says he's returning from a dance. Fortas notes that a lawyer would have followed up on Cook's relationship to Gideon and his reason for being...