GIDEON’S ARMY follows the personal stories of Travis Williams, Brandy Alexander and June Hardwick, three young public defenders who are part of a small group of idealistic lawyers in the Deep South challenging the assumptions that drive a criminal justice system strained to the breaking point. Backed by mentor Jonathan “Rap” Rapping, a charismatic leader who heads the Southern Public Defender Training Center (now known as Gideon’s Promise) they struggle against long hours, low pay and staggering caseloads so common that even the most committed often give up in their first year. Nearly 50 years since the landmark Supreme Court ruling Gideon vs. Wainwright that established the right to counsel, can these courageous lawyers revolutionize the way America thinks about indigent defense and make “justice for all” a reality?

In 1963 the Supreme Court decided the landmark case Gideon vs. Wainwright. The holding was simple: in felony cases people who cannot afford a lawyer must be provided one. Most states responded to the ruling by creating offices for public defenders to defend poor people charged with serious crimes. But Gideon’s promise has not been fulfilled. Too many public defenders have become little more than speed bumps on an indigent’s journey to conviction.

Most concerning is this: Every year hundreds of innocent indigents are swept away in the crushing tide of a system strained to the breaking point. As it stands today, innocents may spend decades in jail, some who are guilty are not brought to justice, and the public is rapidly losing faith in the fairness and competency of the criminal justice system. While the moral implications are staggering, this travesty of justice occurs against the backdrop of an unprecedented economic climate where an economically strapped nation can ill afford to spend needless dollars imprisoning the innocent.

The problem is particularly acute in the South. Newly minted lawyers fresh out of school are handed case files and a few words of encouragement and then most are left to fend for themselves. With little or no training, some make their way, but many do not. Low pay, long hours, and an endless parade of clients can overwhelm even the most idealistic practitioner over time.

In addition to these professional challenges, low salaries and high student loan debt cause a high degree of stress to them and other public defenders. According to the US Department of Justice, “student loan debt is consistently sited as the overwhelming reason why attorneys decline or leave positions as prosecutors and public defenders.” Many drop out of the system altogether, joining their counterparts with more resources and higher salaries at commercial law firms.

Defendants in the South face some of the steepest potential sentences in the country. The Institute for Southern Studies explains in Doing time in the South that “tough on crime” criminal justice policies like mandatory minimum sentences and "three strikes you're out" laws enacted in the 1980s and 1990s have led to a quadrupling of the country's prison population since 1980, with the South accounting for nearly half of that increase.

This combination of severely under-resourced public defenders, with some of the most punitive laws in the nation, has led Southern Public Defender Training Center founder Jonathan Rapping to call the situation in the Deep South “the civil rights issue of our time.”

An official selection in the prestigious U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, GIDEON’S ARMY was awarded the editing prize at the festival. The film premiered on HBO summer 2013.