TODAY is the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Gideon v. Wainright, the case holding that criminal defendants facing significant jail time have the constitutional right to legal representation. This is the tenant that our modern system of providing public defenders to indigent suspects is based upon. Unfortunately, the modern reality of overbearing public defender case loads (due in part to the “war on drugs”) has eroded this right and the constitutional foundation under it. This impending anniversary was the impetus behind just-released book Chasing Gideon: The Elusive Quest for Poor People’s Justice by Karen Houppert.
The book asks whether true justice means that “we will pay lip service to the notion that everyone has a lawyer to represent them in court?” or simply that “we will provide a warm body in a suit and tie to stand next to the defendant?” (Intro p. x-xi) It scrutinizes the heartbreaking facts behind several public defender-represented defendants, whose “guilt” was rather questionable at best. It also looks at the exhausting efforts made by the public defenders in defending these cases. Typically, “inadequate funding and troublesome limits on indigent counsel have made the promise of effective assistance of counsel more myth than fact, more illusion than substance.” (p. 48)
One public defender was used to the plea bargaining ritual that regularly took place between her department and the prosecutors, but then noticed that the “reasonable” offers started disappearing. It turned out that the department numbers had shifted so that there were 38 prosecutors to 17 public defenders (upon which 80% of criminal defendants relied), thus skewing the previous bargaining positions. Similarly, Houppert tells how “…public defender systems regularly hemorrhage attorneys who left in a blaze of fury or slowly simmered with resentment until they burn out after a few years.” (p. 250) Finally, the book makes the provocative suggestion that ”…while there are many contributing factors leading to increased incarceration, underfunding of public defender offices may be one of these.” (p. 236)
This page-turning read is most appropriate for Gideon’s anniversary, and available for checkout at our library. See also this feature article in today’s New Yor Times, which considers Gideon not only in its original criminal context, but also what it holds (or doesn’t hold) in the civil context.
