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Nationwide, Public Defender Offices Are in Crisis

By standdown

That's the title of a major AP report by national writer Deborah Hastings.  Earlier this morning a House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on indigent defense.  I'll have more information on that in the next post, followed by a post on a funding crisis in the Cook County Illinois PD's office.The AP, which is in many newspapers today, is here; two brief excerpts from this must-read:"If you can't afford an attorney, and you fall into the criminal justice system, you are really, really screwed," said Demetrius Thomas of the New York American Civil Liberties Union. Especially now. The spiraling recession and overwhelmed public defenders, some who've rebelled by filing lawsuits to reduce caseloads, pose one of the greatest challenges to the system since the U...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on June 04, 2009 (boomark / email).