THE DEFENSE
NEVER RESTS
The rest are represented by a
public defender, free of charge.
This extraordinary right dates
only to 1962, when the Supreme
Court heard the case of Clarence
Gideon, a penniless and uneducated Florida man forced to represent himself in a felony robbery
case after being denied a courtappointed attorney. In a landmark
decision, the court ruled unanimously that denying free counsel
to Gideon, who was sentenced to
five years in prison, violated his
right under the Sixth Amendment
to a fair trial. The decision created the nation’s public defense
system, as legislatures in every
state passed laws creating programs to provide all criminal
defendants with counsel.
Fifty years later, this public defender system is widely seen as
failing, overtaxed by improbably
high caseloads, poorly supervised
and catastrophically underfunded.
Except for the comparatively small
number of defendants charged
in federal court, the provision of
attorneys to the poor is left exclusively to the states, creating
a patchwork of 50 autonomous
systems functioning without
federal oversight. State legislatures fully underwrite many
HUFFINGTON
10.28.12
“OUR COUNTY
PROBABLY LOOKS
AT OUR OFFICE AS
REPRESENTING
ALL THE SCUM
OF THE EARTH.”
systems; others are supported
through a mix of state and local
funding. Regardless of where the
money comes from, there is never
enough to go around.
The problems plaguing the system have been recognized by Congress and at the highest levels of
the Obama administration. At a
national summit on indigent defense in New Orleans this February, hosted by the American Bar
Association, Attorney General
Eric Holder called the issue a “key
area of focus” for the Justice Department, and himself personally.
Legal representation for the poor,
Holder said, was hobbled by “insufficient resources, overwhelming caseloads and inadequate
oversight.” He noted how poor
defendants often spend weeks and
even months in jail before seeing
an attorney, while others are en-