The Trump administration justifies Kilmer Abrego Garcia’s removal from the U.S. by saying he is a human trafficker, a wife beater, a member of MS-13 and a terrorist. Did he do these things? Perhaps. Perhaps not. He denies the accusations but has not been given the opportunity to present his evidence to an impartial magistrate.
Clarence Gideon had an eighth-grade level of intelligence. He was a drifter and had been in and out of prison for non-violent offenses. In 1961 he was arrested in Florida for breaking and entering.
He had no money and asked that the court appoint an attorney to represent him. The court refused because Florida law required an appointment of an attorney in capital cases only. Mr. Gideon lost his case and was sentenced to five years in prison.
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the lower court in the well known case of Gideon v. Wainwright. The court held that indigent defendants were entitled to counsel in a criminal case whether they could afford it or not.
So, if I fall on hard times, am arrested and can’t afford an attorney, I will have an attorney defending me because of an itinerant repeat offender named Clarence Gideon.
There will never be a Musk v. Wainwright. It is the least, and sometimes the worst, among us, who have a right denied to them, and fight back for that right, that guarantees that right to the rest of us.
So, I don’t care whether Abrego Garcia did what the administration claims. He was denied the opportunity to defend himself. He must be brought back and be given the opportunity to present his defense because that is the only way ICE will know that I have the same right if I am inadvertently scooped up in an ICE sweep.
Melissa C. Batson
Monroe
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