Why public defenders

Or that is what I thought for a moment. I was interested in public defense, and honestly, it seemed like a fun job. The work is dynamic. What sold me was this case. Actually, getting to know my client and telling his story was profoundly important in my life.

A year-old Black kid from rural Tennessee receiving a life sentence for possessing cocaine seemed like a significant injustice. That story led me to pursue becoming a public defender. What I have learned since then in my three years at the Nashville Defenders office has been eye-opening. Public defending is not an easy job. Both outsiders to the criminal justice system and sometimes our clients may think we are incompetent at what we do or even immoral for doing it.

I would love for the average citizen to understand that the right to an attorney when accused of a crime is afforded to ALL by our constitution. And it should not be determined by the ability to pay. In the case Gideon vs. Wainwright , the Supreme Court held that the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of counsel is a fundamental right essential to a fair trial and, as such, applies to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

There are so many barriers to success in meeting the needs of clients. Large caseloads and lack of resources make it difficult to fight for poor people accused of crimes, people who are already the most marginalized in society.

But the politics of criminal justice have changed sharply over the past few years, and so too has, perhaps, the role that Gideon can play in bringing about real change. Our criminal laws are sprawling, open-ended codes that punish people for wide swaths of behavior. The core problem with Gideon -focused reform is that mass incarceration is driven by decisions made by police and prosecutors about who to arrest and who to charge, not procedural issues about how the arrest is made or how the trial or plea bargain is conducted.

The criminal justice system is a blunt tool, and not everyone who violates the terms of a criminal statute should be arrested, charged, convicted, sentenced. In fact, Butler suggests that focusing on Gideon might make reforms harder , by effectively white-washing the substantive injustices of our criminal justice system, such as disparities in which groups such as low-income Black men face higher risks of arrests, charges, and convictions, for the same conduct.

In other words, while improving the often-frightening procedural failings of the criminal process is important work, real reform lies far more in changing the systemic choices made by police and prosecutors. The decisions about where to deploy police, what sort of arrest policies to have, what sort of cases prosecutors get charged vs.

This is why, Butler suggests, focusing on Gideon risks making reform harder. If everyone has a decent lawyer, then we might be less troubled by why some people are more likely to need that lawyer in the first place. Yet, suddenly, perhaps public defenders are in a position to make these changes. Perhaps today, Gideon can serve a new, substantive function. Over the past few years, at least in more urban counties , voters have started to push prosecutors to adopt less harsh and more progressive policies.

The changes they demand are systemic, not individualistic: to no longer ask for cash bail in entire categories of cases, to stop prosecuting entire types of offenses such as marijuana and low-level theft , and so on. Manhattan DA Cy Vance, meanwhile, continues to promise to stop charging people with jumping turnstiles, yet seems to keep doing so.

A public defender will likely have a good grasp on what the plausible options for you will be, and be able to present an acceptable plea bargain deal to the prosecutor and judge.

As a result, you may be done with the criminal process and on with the rest of your life sooner than if you were represented by a private attorney. Probably the most apparent disadvantage of hiring a public defender is that they often have a huge overload of cases, and thus cannot devote too much time to any particular one including yours. As a result, you may have little or no access to your lawyer except during the actual court hearings.

Public defenders often lack office equipment and the levels of research access that private attorneys have available.

Public defenders also can rarely afford to hire investigators to collect evidence to support your case.