|
When the government has almost unlimited resources to prosecute and persecute unemployed, poor people, who are locked in a jail cells because they can't make bond, it is almost certain the alleged criminals won't be able to defend themselves adequately or get a fair trail.
Injustice in Murder Cases Published: December 24, 2011 In most American counties, some indigent criminal defendants are represented by a public defender, and others by a private court-appointed lawyer. A new RAND study focusing on Philadelphia exposes a vast difference in how clients fare depending on the kind of lawyer they are assigned. The startling findings show that merely providing an indigent defendant a lawyer, as the Constitution requires in felony cases, is not enough to secure justice. If that lawyer is not screened for quality, trained to handle the client’s type of case or paid enough to cover the time required, the client is unlikely to get fair treatment — whether in the Philadelphia system or anywhere else. The study examined murder cases of indigent defendants with similar profiles in the city from 1994 to 2005. The conviction rate of clients represented by staff lawyers working for the public defender association, a nonprofit organization that the city pays for its services, was 19 percent lower than those represented by court-appointed lawyers working alone. Their expected time served in prison was 24 percent lower, and they were far less likely to get a life sentence. Philadelphia’s public defenders, who are randomly assigned to represent one out of every five indigent defendants accused of murder, are paid decent salaries, have money to hire expert witnesses and work in experienced teams. Court-appointed lawyers, representing the rest, are poorly paid, tend to take on more cases than they can handle and generally practice without feedback from other lawyers. As a result, the study concludes, defendants with court-appointed lawyers often get inadequate counsel, in violation of the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment, and are vulnerable to greater punishment, in violation of the Eighth Amendment. It is well-known that Pennsylvania — and Philadelphia in particular — provides inadequate counsel in cases for which the death penalty can be imposed. But clearly, the problem is broader. One solution would be to pay court-appointed lawyers more or to have public defenders represent all indigent murder defendants. Money may be hard to find, since Pennsylvania is the only state that provides no support to local government for indigent defense. But as the RAND study pointed out, if the state helped to improve the quality of counsel, it would achieve fairer outcomes, and possibly reduce prison costs by over $200 million. The citizens of Pennsylvania would benefit, as well as the indigent defendants. |