In 1961, Clarence Earl Gideon stood trial in Florida, accused of robbing a pool hall. Gideon was poor and could not afford a lawyer, so he requested that the court provide one for him. Under Florida law at the the time, the state only provided lawyers for defendants accused of capital offenses, so the trial court did not appoint one. Gideon represented himself in trial, and he was convicted. While serving his prison sentence, Gideon petitioned the courts to overturn his conviction, arguing that the trial court's decision violated his constitutional right to be represented by counsel. The Supreme Court decided to throw out the conviction because, under the Supreme Court's understanding of the Sixth Amendment's Right to Counsel, providing a lawyer was necessary to ensure a fair trial. The Court then explained that the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of counsel is a fundamental and essential right, and, as such, the Fourteenth Amendment made it applicable to states, so that it applied to state trials. Thus, the Court extended the protection provided in the Sixth Amendment to require that states must provide counsel to defendants too poor to afford lawyers. Which of the following statements best explains the impact of this decision? Group of answer choices It replaced the states' various systems for provideing public defenders with a new system of granting federally mandated defense attorneys due to the requirements of the Sixth and Sixteenth Amendments. It established the Sixth