Public Defense

The real cause of prison overcrowding: public defenders

By Gideon

Well, they’re at it again. The law firm that can’t seem to sell itself without dumping on public defenders has another post up. This post actually makes some valid points and seems more like a blog post than a marketing advert. At least until you get to the middle, that is:

A vast majority of the people that end up in prison are represented by the public defenders offices throughout the state. In many cases, to know fault of their own the public defender cannot provide the level of legal defense that should be received by anyone facing jail time. Thus the jails are full of poor people, mostly minority who could not find the funds to retain private counsel.

There are so many things wrong with that paragraph, least of all the spelling.

The implication here is that if you’re poor, you’ll go to jail. If you’re rich (or have money to hire this particular law firm), you won’t. Doesn’t matter whether the State has a strong case; wave some greenbacks in the prosecutor’s face and he’ll go straight to his knees.

This also seems like false advertising to me. They’re promising things they can’t deliver. Are they really saying that prison overcrowding would not be a problem if everyone was represented by private counsel (or perhaps just their firm)? They seem to be implying that every case is winnable, if you have the money to hire a lawyer.

Does anyone know how good this firm is? Anyone heard of them? Any readers from the West Coast? Why do they keep doing this? Did one of them get fired from the PDs office?

In a similar vein, see recent posts from Norm and Scott.

In other news, public defenders are also the cause of black holes, crop circles and Dick Cheney’s sneery disposition.

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Full post as published by A Public Defender on March 12, 2008 (boomark / email).