Public Defense System

The United States federal government has a specific process it follows to allocate the monies it receives from different sources. Much of the money is funneled to resources that directly assist the public and for the department of defense, so the other agencies must fight for the funding that they receive. Since the cost of conducting business increases each year, the agencies always ask for more money than they were budgeted the previous year, but in the past two years many agencies have been asked to absorb cuts to their yearly budget. The federal justice system, which is made up of the judiciary, corrections systems and various law enforcement agencies is one of the groups that have been forced to trim their budgetary expectations as other departments need more to survive. A description, analysis and evaluation of this process is the focus of

[The United States, is it a country of deviant lawbreakers? Or is it a country of too many laws? There were more than 12 million arrests in 2011, the question of how to adjudicate these cases has become an issue for the federal, state and local courts across the country. The overcrowding of our court dockets has become a major problem for court administrators working in every courthouse in the United States. Why the courts are so overcrowded, and how the court administrators, judges, and attorneys deal with overcrowding will be the focus of this paper.

A convenience sample was gathered from the District Attorney and Public Defender offices in California. One state alone was used considering that this survey deals with sentencing practices and such practices vary by state in the United States. All head District Attorneys and Public Defenders in all 58 counties in California were contacted over an 18-month period by means of email, telephone, and postal mail

Today, the number of cases defended by public defenders is huge. For example, in 2011 in Miami Dade County, the largest of the 20 Florida Circuit Courts, approximately 100,000 cases were assigned to Public Defenders.The Court held that the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of counsel is a fundamental right essential to a fair trial and, as such, applies the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In overturning Betts, Justice Black stated that “reason and reflection require us to recognize that in our adversary system of criminal justice, any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him.” He again wrote to defend his position that the “noble ideal” of “fair trials before impartial tribunals in which every defendant stands equal before the law . . . cannot be realized if the poor man charged with crime has to face his accusers without a lawyer to assist

Mass Incarceration is a growing dilemma in the United States that populates our prisons at an alarming rate. Michelle Alexander is a professor at Ohio State University and a graduate of Stanford law school. She states in her award winning book, The new Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness “In less than thirty years, the U.S. penal population exploded from around 300,000 to more than 2 million” (Alexander, 6). These young men and women are unable to afford a decent lawyer because they come from such a poverty-stricken background. Men and women are at a financial disadvantage in our justice system. Lawyers and attorneys cost a fortune and most people can just simply not afford them. Others plead to their charges because

After the Court`s decision, Gideon was appointed an attorney and acquitted after an hour long deliberation by the jury. Many people were released and retried based on Gideon`s decision. The Court had a great intent and vision that the right to counsel is required at all critical stages of the justice process. However, recent studies have displayed that public defenders and court appointed lawyers are disproportionately underfunded compared to private attorneys. Public defenders experience a great workload having multiple court appearances a day, and on average spending only 7 minutes to prepare and review for the trial. This data shows that indigent defendants are not represented properly in the court of law and it forces the accused to plea

Roughly 90% of all criminal cases in the United States are resolved with a plea deal. This statistic is shocking upon first glance. The sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a speedy and public trial, yet 90% of cases never make it that far. In fact, some never make it to the Grand Jury at all. Over countless decades of practice, the notion of plea bargaining has become prevalent to the point of normality. However, when taking into account the idea that those 90% of criminals will never stand trial, nor even see a jury, it is astonishing. From the moment the supreme court recognised plea bargaining as a legitimate practice to today, debates have raged over its effectiveness, morality, and constitutionality. Despite the heated controversy,

Williams, M. (2014). The effect of attorney type on bail decisions. Criminal Justice Policy Review. doi:10. 1177/0887403414562603.

Federal crimes can relate to anything from wire fraud to child pornography to drugs and firearms charges. If you are charged in Federal Court, are the target of, or are being investigated by, a Federal Agency (i.e., DEA, FBI, ICE, IRS or the ATF), it is imperative that you hire an experienced Federal Criminal Defense Attorney to represent you.

When comparing The United States criminal justice system to any other nation's system of justice, it becomes abundantly clear that we have the fairest and efficient system of justice in the world. Notwithstanding, that fact, like all systems of law it has its flaws; but our system must continue to flow as smoothly as possible. Therefore, certain practices or options for prosecution were adopted. Accordingly, the practice of plea bargaining, which enables a defendant to reduce their charges down to a lesser offense, or have certain charges dropped altogether to reduce their sentence, has become standard.

While plea-bargaining remains an effective tool for public defenders, the combination of amassing cases and the lack of attention to them has been cause for concern for many in the criminal justice system. One can see that perhaps the best solution to the increasing incarceration rate as a result of criminalization is to begin reforming the criminal justice system to reduce incarceration rates. As Roger Fairfax argues in his article in the Yale Law Journal, “The growth in caseloads has been fueled, in part, by the proliferation of minor criminal offenses that could be classified as civil infractions” (Fairfax 2330). This statement directly supports the idea that reclassifying criminal offenses will reduce the amount of cases because it acknowledges that many of the cases causing overload are criminal offenses that could become civil ones. Therefore, reducing the amount of cases by reclassifying and decriminalizing infractions to smaller civil infractions will eliminate the need for indigent counsel in many cases, and thus will have palpable impact on the caseload felt by public defenders.

It is important for anyone convicted of a criminal case, especially those who are innocent, to have an adequate attorney, in order to atleast have a chance in proving their innocence, Therefore, instead of continuing to put most of our money in the prison system, we should use at least some of that money towards public attorneys. According to a 2008 estimate by the American Bar Association, state and county governments spent 200 billion dollars on criminal justice every year but only spent 5.3 billion dollars on public defence systems (Laughland, 2016). In addition, many public defenders are overworked. About 73 percent of county public defender offices exceeded the maximum recommended limit of case (150 felonies or 400 misdemeanors), according to the United States Department of Justice (Brunt, 2015). Therefore, it is necessary to limit the amount of work provided to the county public defender offices which would allow the defenders to provide the time necessary to each of their cases in order to have a fair trial for the

As inmate levels increased to record levels, so did the volume of law suits filed by prisoners. From the late 1980’s to the early 1990’s, federal courts experienced an unexpected increase in prisoner litigation. Most complaints were focused on an inmate’s constitutional right to due process being violated because of an overwhelming rise in the inmate population which was backing up the court system. The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) of 1995 was designed to significantly decrease the volume by

On or about June 5, 2015, the applicant was the owner of American Public Defense Inc.

This article begins with the issue of adequate legal representation and the problem with ineffective defense in court. It also contains an explanation of several Supreme Court Cases involving the right to effective assistance of counsel and some standards set for determining whether a given performance can be considered competent.it can provide useful quotations for examining what issues are involved in the implementation of the right of a fair trial.