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Missouri Indigent Defense

By Steve Hall

Today's New York Times reports, "Budget Woes Hit Defense Lawyers for the Indigent," by Monica Davey.  Here's the beginning:Some public defenders in Missouri say the stressed state budget is interfering with their ability to provide poor defendants with their constitutional right to a lawyer. They say they are so overworked and underfinanced that they have begun trying to reject new cases assigned to them late in the month, when, they say, their workloads are already beyond capacity. Concerns about a deteriorating, overwhelmed public defender system in this country have been around for decades, but they have ballooned recently as state budgets shrink and more defendants qualify for free legal counsel. ?This has been a problem in good economic times, and now it?s only worse,? said Jo-Ann Wallace, president and chief executive of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on September 10, 2010 (boomark / email).