Bruce Jacob

Bruce Robert Jacob (born March 26, 1935) is a former Assistant Attorney General for the State of Florida during the early 1960s.

Bruce Jacob was born in Chicago, Illinois, on March 26, 1935, and was raised in Hinsdale, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

The previous 1942 Supreme Court case of Betts v. Brady required the appointment of counsel for an indigent defendant at state expense if there was a “special circumstance” present in the case which made it necessary for counsel to be provided for the defendant to receive a fair trial.

For example, if the defendant was indigent and was extremely young, or lacked education or experience, was unfamiliar with court procedures, or if the charges against him were complex, the trial court was required under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to appoint counsel.

Jacob argued against any extension of the defendant's right to counsel.

The Court in Gideon overruled Betts and required state courts to appoint attorneys for defendants in all felony prosecutions.

Gideon had been convicted of breaking the Bay Harbor Poolroom, located in the small community of Bay Harbor, near Panama City, Florida.

His conviction was set aside and the case was sent back to the trial court in Panama City for a new trial.

At the second trial, he was represented by appointed attorney Fred Turner and Gideon was acquitted.

The decision in Gideon led to the establishment of many more public defender offices throughout the United States than had existed previously.

He and his family moved to Sarasota, Florida, when he was 16 and he graduated from Sarasota High School in 1953.

During his senior year, he played the violin in the Florida West Coast Symphony.

Also, he participated in football, basketball, and track, and in track was the 1953 Florida high school state champion in the half-mile run.

For his first year of college, he attended Principia College, in Elsah, Illinois, and there he lettered in basketball and track.

Beginning his second year he transferred to Florida State University, where he lettered in track.

Also, he played in the Florida State Symphony orchestra and became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity.

He received a B.A. degree from Florida State in 1957.

He studied law at Stetson University College of Law, St. Petersburg, Florida, and received the J.D. degree in 1959.

At Stetson, during his senior year, he was the president of the student body.

Jacob began his legal career in the Florida Attorney General’s office, in Tallahassee, in 1960 and there he represented the state in 19 appeals before the Florida Supreme Court and District Courts of Appeal of Florida.

In 1962 he joined the firm of Holland, Bevis, and Smith, in Bartow and Lakeland Florida as an associate.

(That firm now is Holland and Knight, in various cities in the United States and other countries).

He represented Louie L. Wainwright, the Director of the Florida Division of Corrections, in the Supreme Court case of Gideon v. Wainwright, decided in March 1963, regarding the right to counsel of indigent defendants in non-capital felony cases in state courts.

The attorney representing the Petitioner, Clarence Gideon, was Abe Fortas, a Washington, D.C. lawyer who later became a Justice of the Supreme Court.

To comply with the Gideon decision, in May 1963, the Florida Legislature enacted a law creating a statewide public defender system and included was a provision allowing lawyers in private firms to become unpaid Special Assistant Public Defenders.

Jacob, who by then was in private practice in Bartow, Florida, volunteered and was appointed to represent defendants in criminal cases under this statute.

Anthony Lewis wrote a book about the case, entitled "Gideon’s Trumpet", published in 1964.

Later, during his career as a lawyer, law professor, and dean, he received an LL.M (Criminal Law) degree from Northwestern University in 1965; the S.J.D. degree from Harvard Law School in 1980; and an LL.M (Taxation) from the University of Florida in 1995.

From 1965 to 1969 Jacob was an Assistant and associate professor at the Emory University School of Law, in Atlanta, Georgia.

In 1966, as assistant professor at Emory Law School, he established the Legal Assistance for Inmates (L.A.I.) The program, providing free legal help to indigent prisoners at the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta.

As a graduate student at the Harvard Law School, from 1968 to 1971 he served as a research associate in the Center for Criminal Justice and as a staff attorney in the Community Legal Assistance Office, a Harvard legal services office in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Jacob subsequently was associate professor, then Professor, and Director of Clinical Programs at the Ohio State University College of Law in Columbus, Ohio from 1971 to 1978.

From 1978 to 1981 he was Dean and Professor of Law of the Mercer University School of Law, in Macon, Georgia.

In 1980 it was made into a movie of the same name, starring Henry Fonda as Clarence Gideon.

From 1981 to 1994 he was Vice President of Stetson University and Dean and Professor at the Stetson College of Law.

From 1994, when he stepped down as Dean, until he retired in 2018, he was a professor of law at Stetson.

Jacob presently is Dean Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of the Stetson University College of Law.

In 2009 Jacob assisted in teaching a course on International Organizations in Lucerne and Geneva, Switzerland.

In 2010 he was a panelist in American law at the Northwest University of Politics and Law, Xi’an, China; Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Chongqing, China; Dalian Maritime University, Dalian City, Manchuria, China; and Tsinghua University, Beijing.

In 2011 he was an instructor in the Program on American Law, sponsored by the Northwest University of Politics and Law, in Xi’an, China.