Right to Counsel

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” (US Const., 8th Amend.) As shown in the constitution the right to counsel for the defense is a key right in our judicial system. The role of the public-defender office is one of utmost importance and rightfully so; every day various arrests are made in relation to all sorts of crimes. As a result many of those who face charges will hire an attorney to provide them with legal assistance. However it is no secret that attorney fees can be quite costly and not everyone can afford to spend such large sums of money at any given point in time. To allow equal access, the government spends millions of taxpayer dollars on the public defense system. These offices and their employees are considered to be part of the Judicial Branch. Their purpose is to provide indigent defendants with access to trained attorneys, which in turn provide them with free legal assistance in regards to their respective case. However, with such a large and important task, this system has key issues that raise the following questions: Is there a standard for the service provided by the attorney that is met by the public defenders? Do these attorneys receive adequate training and funds in order to represent indigent defendants equally? Should the defendants be appointed attorneys who are equal to...

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...r: The Case for a Structural Injunction to Improve Indigent Defense Services” The Yale Law Journal 101.2 (1991): 481-504.

• Fahringer, Philip. “Equal Protection and the indigent degendant: Griffin and its progeny” Stanford Law Review 16.22 (1964): 394-415.

• Ogletree, Charles J. “An Essay on the New Public Defender for the 21st Century” Law and Contemporary Problems 58.1 (1995): 81-93.

• Schwarzer, William W. “Dealing with Incompetent Counsel: The Trial Judge's Role” Harvard Law Review 93.4 (1980): 633-669.

• Kemper, Bob. “Right to Counsel: Landmark Decision Falls Short of Promise” nacdl.org. National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, n.p. web. Sept. 2009.

• “Right to Counsel” schr.org. The Law Office of the Southern Center for Human Rights, n.d. n.p.

• Siegel, Larry. Essentials of Criminal Justice. Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. Print.