By Brennan Center for Justice – 03/01/10
Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe will head a DOJ-push to strengthen indigent defense. Attorney General Holder urged renewed commitment to legal defense for the poor at this year's Brennan Legacy Awards Dinner and at the 2010 Indigent Defense Symposium. "Ours is an adversarial system of justice -- it requires lawyers on both sides who effectively represent their client's interests," Holder said at our dinner. "When defense counsel are handicapped by lack of training, time, and resources...we start to wonder: Is justice being done? Is justice being served?"
Tags: Justice, Racial Justice, Civil Justice, Civil Legal Aid, Criminal Justice, Indigent Defense Reform
By Brennan Center for Justice – 02/18/10
Watch live video on C-SPAN2 today of the Department of Justice National Symposium on Indigent Defense, off and on until 3:00pm.
Brennan Center counsel Melanca Clark will be part of the panel at 10:45am, "The Evolving Role of the Public Defender".
Tags: Justice, Racial Justice, Criminal Justice, Community-Oriented Defender Network, Indigent Defense Reform
By Maggie Barron – 09/17/08
Those of us raised on cop dramas take for granted that in this country you have the right to an attorney, and that if you cannot afford it, one will be provided to you. What Americans don't know is that in courtrooms across the country, there is a lot of room to interpret what "afford" actually means.
This week, the Brennan Center for Justice released a new report, "Eligible for Justice," exposing the lack of standards for determining who is eligible for court-appointed defense counsel. In a national study, the Brennan Center found that many jurisdictions use flawed screening processes to separate those who can afford counsel from those who cannot, and as a result are denying government-funded defense counsel to people who should receive it, in violation of the Sixth Amendment.
The landmark Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright requires that states provide counsel to all people charged with felonies who are unable to afford their own attorney without substantial hardship. Yet states have been provided with little instruction on how to determine which individuals are genuinely unable to pay for counsel. Some courts have no standards at all.
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Tags: Justice, Criminal Justice, Indigent Defense Reform
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