Gideon V. Wainwright Summary

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Imagine getting a ticket and deciding not to pay the fine by the deadline. The court will issue a notice for you to pay for it or you will be charged for misdemeanor. You have the option to go to court and if you can’t afford a private lawyer, then the court will assign you a public defender, or a lawyer appointed by the court of no cost to you.Your right to have a lawyer and a fair trial is protected by the Sixth Amendment. These clauses are enforced by Gideon v. Wainwright, where the Supreme Court ruled that a criminal defendant has the right to have legal counsel if they could not afford one (“Facts and Case Summary – Gideon v. Wainwright”). Fifty years after the ruling, public attorneys have been under scrutiny by both lawyers and clients. …show more content…

The National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals set a limit that each criminal defense attorney can take 150 felony cases per year, but “caseloads of 500, 600, 800, or more are common” (“Five Problems”). With that, criminal defense attorneys are forced to triage or reject cases, leaving potential clients to go to court without representation. If the defendant does have a public attorney, their defense is unprepared and vulnerable to make mistakes when working out a reasonable sentence. In one of his cases, Jones and his client accepted a deal with the prosecution for a three year sentence for stealing locks. Upon further investigation, the prosecution discovered that they made a mistake in calculating the minimum sentence – Jones’s client should have only served “366 days,” but it was already too late (Eckholm). Now, this brings into question if public defenders are ethically competent to represent their client in court with such a workload. The Supreme Court states that if the criminal defense attorney does not review each lawsuit they receive with sufficient time and resources dedicated to each client “then both the system and the attorney are in breach of their ethical and constitutional obligations to that defendant” (Mosher). In other words, the lawyer assigned is not allowed to handle a case if they are forced to spend more time on one over the others …show more content…

A study found that public defenders have an “average sentence … [that] was almost three years longer than the average for clients of private lawyers” (Hoffman). In addition, the same study found that most criminal defendants are “marginally indigent,” or afford to hire a private lawyer with their friends and family pitching in to pay the costs (Hoffman). As a result, the accused opt for hiring a private lawyer to represent them in court. This doesn’t mean that a private lawyer could secure a win for the defendant, with more time and resources dedicated, a stronger argument could be made to prove the defendant’s

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