ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
THE DEFENSE
NEVER RESTS
couraged to waive their right to
counsel and plead guilty without
understanding their rights, the
charges against them or the potential sentences they face.
“You’ve seen the alarming statistics. And some of you have experienced this harsh reality firsthand, in the communities where
you live and practice. So I don’t
need to tell you that this represents a crisis,” he said.
In New Orleans, Holder announced $2.4 million in new federal grants to aid public defender
programs and to study problems
in the system, and described the
Obama administration as providing an “unprecedented level of
support” to improve poor people’s access to quality legal help.
Yet the administration’s efforts
are dwarfed by the effect of the
financial meltdown and recession on states and municipalities,
which slashed funds from defender programs, even as the number of prosecutions continued to
climb or remained the same.
Federal support for public defender programs also remains
miniscule, totaling less than
$10 million per year, a pittance
compared to the hundreds of
millions of dollars in federal aid
HUFFINGTON
10.28.12
given to prosecutors and police,
according to Christopher Durocher, a researcher with the Constitution Project, a non-partisan
legal think tank.
Burn WGFR