Abe Krash, a junior partner at the law firm Arnold, Fortas & Porter, played a pivotal role in the 1963 Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright, which established the right to counsel in criminal cases. He passed away on July 6 at 97, the New York Times reports. The Gideon decision was part of a string of cases in which the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren shored up civil liberties in the the criminal justice system. The case centered on Clarence Earl Gideon, who had been arrested in 1961 after breaking into a pool hall and stealing money from a vending machine. The judge denied his request for legal counsel, forcing him to mount his own defense. He was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. Gideon sent a handwritten plea to the Supreme Court, saying his constitutional rights had been violated and requesting that it take up his case.
The court agreed and requested Abe Fortas, one of Krash's senior partners, to handle the case because he and the firm's founding partners were strong advocates for civil liberties. Fortas assigned Krash to research every aspect of the case and help draft a brief. As chronicled by Anthony Lewis in his book “Gideon’s Trumpet,” Fortas dictated the overall strategy, but left it to Krash to flesh it out. Working with another junior lawyer, Paul Temple, and a summer associate, John Hart Ely, Krash spent months immersed in the history and finer details of case law and previous court decisions. He provided vital support for Fortas’s two core arguments: that because many states and the federal government already provided universal counsel, establishing it as a right would not be a radical step; and that the current rule, under which defendants with “special circumstances” had to receive counsel, was too vague. The court ruled for Gideon in 1963. He was later retried and acquitted.