Clarence Earl Gideon.

Clarence Earl Gideon.

A panel of Ohio legal professionals will discuss how a jailhouse lawyer changed history 50 years ago during the Ohio Supreme Court’s Forum on the Law on May 23.

Panelists will explore the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Gideon v. Wainwright – the landmark case requiring states to provide counsel for indigent defendants under the Fourteenth Amendment. Five decades later, is the guaranteed right to counsel being fulfilled? How does the structure and funding of Ohio’s indigent defense system impact that promise?

Alan Michaels, dean of The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, will serve as moderator for the “Gideon’s Promise” panel discussion. A former clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, Michaels served as a prosecutor in New York for four years before joining OSU in 1995.

The three panelists include:

• Tim Young, director of the Office of the Ohio Public Defender, which provides and supports representation to poor defendants across Ohio. He currently serves as president of the American Council of Chief Defenders.
• David Singleton, executive director of the Ohio Justice and Policy Center in Cincinnati. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he worked as a public defender in Harlem and Washington, D.C.
• The Honorable Nick Selvaggio, who brings the perspective of a judge and former prosecutor to the discussion. He is serving his first term as judge on the Champaign County Common Pleas Court. From 1996 to 2012, he was the county’s prosecuting attorney.

The lecture and reception are open to the public at no charge, but reservations are required. To reserve your seat, R.S.V.P. to events@sconet.state.oh.us or 614.387.9267. Registration begins at 5:30 p.m. with the panel discussion to begin at 6 p.m. A reception will follow at 7 p.m.