
Public defender: it’s impossible for me to do a good job representing my clients - ikeboy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-public-defender-system-isnt-just-broken--its-unconstitutional/2015/09/03/aadf2b6c-519b-11e5-9812-92d5948a40f8_story.html
======
axxl
> I’ve been asked by my family members, my friends and my hairdresser why I
> represent criminals.

That's the most sad part of this article to me. Many people have lost
innocent-until-proven-guilty in their minds. Tina has a good response in the
article:

> The answer is that I, and other public defenders, don’t represent criminals.
> We represent poor people who are facing criminal charges — charges on which
> they are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. We represent
> members of our communities who have a right to real and meaningful legal
> representation, even if they are poor.

~~~
geofft
There's a subtler point: _even if they are criminals_ , it's still valid to
represent criminals to make sure that justice is served. You want criminals
punished for the crimes they did commit, not the ones they didn't. You want
sentencing to be fair, not vindictive. You want conspirators and other
partners to be identified and to be punished too; you don't want the one
unrepresented person to be coerced by everyone else's lawyers into taking all
the blame. You want loopholes, as long as they exist, to be as available to
the poor as to the rich.

I think I'm actually more worried about the loss of this than the loss of
innocence-until-proven-guilty. That's the sort of stuff that gets people
thinking, if you don't want to be extrajudicially killed on the streets, don't
sell untaxed goods if you have asthma.

~~~
pdonis
There's also a not-quite-subtler point: many of the "crimes" in question are
nonviolent and do no harm to anyone other than the supposed "criminal". The
article specifically mentions "possession of a single joint" as something that
can lead to life imprisonment if you do it three times. What kind of sense
does that make?

~~~
maratd
> What kind of sense does that make?

Makes perfect sense when you have self-interested parties (law enforcement,
for-profit prisons, prosecutors, etc.) who benefit from the volume.

We made it profitable to criminalize people.

~~~
rayiner
The OP's characterization of it is wrong--three non-violent felonies couldn't
trigger three-strikes' even before California's recent reform (you had two
have two violent felonies first).

Moreover, for-profit prisons barely existed in the early 1990's when states
like California and Washington started passing three strikes laws. Law
enforcement, prison unions, private prisons, etc, have definitely benefited
from these things, but the actual policies arose from public outrage in the
1980's and 1990's about the government being "soft on crime." For example,
either California's law was passed on the back of public outrage at the murder
of Polly Klass.

One bit of context that's lost in current discussions is how much
consternation existed in the 1980's and 1990's about crime. If you look at the
media from the time, there is a ton of hand-wringing about criminals being let
out early on parole or clearly guilty people getting acquitted "on a
technicality" (usually a 4th amendment violation).

A movie that captures the zeitgeist of the time is the 1983 movie Star
Chamber:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Chamber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Chamber):
"Judge Steven Hardin (Michael Douglas) is an idealistic Los Angeles jurist who
gets frustrated when the technicalities of the law prevent the prosecution of
two men who are accused of raping and killing a 10-year-old boy. They were
driving slowly late at night and attracted the suspicion of two police
officers, who wondered if the van's occupants might be burglars. After
checking the license plate for violations, the policemen pulled them over for
expired paperwork, claimed to have smelled marijuana, then saw a bloody shoe
inside the van. However, the paperwork was actually submitted on time (it was
merely processed late), meaning the police had no reason to pull over the van
and Hardin has no choice (see fruit of the poisonous tree) but to throw out
any subsequently discovered evidence, i.e. the bloody shoe. Hardin is even
more distraught when the father of the boy attempts to shoot the criminals in
court but misses and shoots a cop instead. Subsequently, the father commits
suicide while in jail only after he informs Hardin that another boy has been
discovered raped and murdered and tells him "This one is on you, your Honor.
That boy would be alive if you hadn't let those men go." After hearing all
this, Judge Hardin approaches his friend, Judge Caulfield (Hal Holbrook), who
tells him of a modern-day Star Chamber: a group of judges who identify
criminals who fell through the judicial system's cracks and then take actions
against them outside the legal structure."

~~~
maratd
> but the actual policies arose from public outrage in the 1980's and 1990's
> about the government being "soft on crime."

Bad laws are quickly removed from the books. Unless someone is pocketing
money.

> Law enforcement, prison unions, private prisons, etc, have definitely
> benefited from these things

Yup.

> One bit of context that's lost in current discussions is how much
> consternation existed in the 1980's and 1990's about crime.

I remember. As I mentioned, policies tend to change with the mood ... unless
someone is making money off of the previous policies.

~~~
harryh
> Bad laws are quickly removed from the books.

Laws of any kind, good or bad, are rarely removed from the books.

------
adanto6840
Why isn't it legally mandated that the budgets for the District Attorney's
office must be less than or equal to the budget for the Public Defender's?

I'm sure there are valid reasons and what I'm suggesting may be unrealistic,
but it sure seems like it'd nearly guarantee that we're upholding the intent
of the Constitution if we did that, eh?

~~~
chc
That is pretty much guaranteed to produce a poor allocation of funds. Every
case requiring public defender resources will also require district attorney
resources, but not every case requiring district attorney resources will
require anything from a public defender, because a lot of people have their
own lawyers.

~~~
segmondy
I think the defenders should have more. Usually when the DA decides to
prosecute, they already have "evidence" Most of their work is done, all they
have to do is present said evidence and in most cases win. The defenders tho
have to work really hard to counter all and any evidence.

e.g get a ticket from the police? that's evidence that you were speeding. you
are paying the fine unless you put in effort to prove you were not.

e.g. get arrested for drugs, guns. those will be seized, the DA will look at
the evidence and prosecute. your lawyer, will have to do work to show that
those are not yours, or that you were legally able to possess those, or some
other way. it seems the public defenders do more work and should have the same
amount of budget, if not more.

~~~
tempestn
Currently they have far less though, so guaranteeing at least equal (relative
to case load) would be a massive improvement.

------
aadraple
The justice system is deeply flawed but technology can help repair it.

Let me explain.

Legal work can be split up into two buckets – process based work and advisory
work.

The advisory work revolves around analysis, comparison and collaboration –
distinctly human (for now) tasks.

The bulk of legal work however is process based, which is repetitive, routine,
administrative and could actually be done through the use of machine learning
and AI. Examples of process-based work are document review and legal research.
Document review is when parties to a case sort through and analyze the
documents in their possession to determine if they are relevant to the case at
hand. Legal research is the process of identifying and retrieving the
necessary information lawyers need to support legal decision-making.

If LegalTech was to do the lions share of a public defender's process based
legal work, they would be able to focus their advisory work. This would allow
a public defender to not only to defend more individuals but most importantly,
to provide _proper_ legal help to everyone they are defending.

The inequalities and problems in the justice system could be seriously
helped/fixed with better adoption and implementation of technology. The
problem is that tech must be embraced not just by individual lawyers and
defenders who it would help the most, but also by the decision makers
themselves, government agencies/law firms, who have the final say on whether
to bring tech into their organizations.

The good news is that there are strides being made towards bringing in tech to
augment lawyers capabilities with technology, the bad news is that no speed is
fast enough as there are a ton of people who require _proper_ legal
representation _right now_ that are missing out.

~~~
rayiner
Legal technology is pretty much totally inapplicable to the work public
defenders do. There's pretty much no documents to speak of in those cases, and
the technology won't interview your client for you and piece together a
detailed timeline of his version of the events. And since their clients are
getting charged with the same sorts of crimes over and over, they already have
the relevant cases handy in their previous filings.

~~~
aadraple
Perhaps legal technologies in their current forms are not as applicable to the
work public defenders do but to say all LegalTech is inapplicable to the work
public defenders do is a stretch.

To use your example, you could actually build technology that would help with
the interview process and aid in mapping out a detailed timeline of their
version of the events.

While repeat offenders may offend in the same pattern the same cannot be said
about _all_ offenders.

Public defenders develop their list of handy relevant cases through experience
on the job. Tech can help train new hires quicker so that they would be able
to jump in and start giving proper legal representation sooner. The system
clearly needs more public defenders.

Legal research does play a key component when it comes to the sentencing of
offenders. Two offenders can be charged with the same crime however it could
have occurred in two entirely different circumstances with the offenders
having starkly different backgrounds and motivations. Due to these
differences, public defenders _should_ do a deep dive in research in order to
provide proper representation rather than relying on only their own personal
list of applicable cases. Effective legal research software would go a long
way in helping over-worked defenders such as Tina Peng.

~~~
rayiner
I really struggle to think of what sort of legal tech would help you interview
a poor client that may not speak english better than a good grasp of Spanish
and a pad of paper. These are not complex cases with tons of moving parts. As
for legal research--your example of finding factually on-point cases is
exactly what existing search algorithms do the worst job of.

Maybe I'm pessimistic. But the gap between promises and actuality in the legal
tech field is very wide, at present, so I'm really skeptical when I hear about
how it will help solve what is really a political/social problem.

~~~
aadraple
Well, if the public defender doesn't know Spanish using software which helps
them to understand their client is a start.

I definitely agree with you on just how bad existing legal research software
is at finding factually on-point results. This was part of my motivation to
help found ROSS Intelligence, which is building better legal research software
with ML and NLP at its core.

And while pessimism and skepticism does help identify the difficulties in
implementing different solutions, it's optimism that helps find the
opportunities imbedded in the difficulties found :)

------
nickalewis
Kind of Off-Topic, but I emailed Tina immediately upon reading this last week.
It really moved me. I'd like to chat with any lawyers working as Public
Defenders, pro bono or otherwise, to get a better idea of the day to day
challenges they have with managing case load and communicating with clients.
Things technoloy could help with. Does anyone know a good
place/community/group to join?

I ask because myself, friends, and close family have all had experience with a
Public defenders office at some point, the article is spot on about many
clients being poor, assumed guilty, and lacking resources. I'm currently
helping families navigate the criminal justice system with a company I started
, but it's been on my head (and heart) to begin looking at providing resources
to PD offices as well, as it's so important that these cases, particular low-
level and drug offenses, are handled efficiently. I would love to get a better
idea of the day-to-day challenges faced by an active public defender.

Also if anyone is interested in a amazing documentary about the courage and
dedication PD's have check out Gideon's Army:
[http://m.imdb.com/title/tt2179053/](http://m.imdb.com/title/tt2179053/). I
think it's on Netflix.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _Kind of Off-Topic, but I emailed Tina immediately upon reading this last
> week. It really moved me. I 'd like to chat with any lawyers working as
> Public Defenders, pro bono or otherwise, to get a better idea of the day to
> day challenges they have with managing case load and communicating with
> clients. Things technoloy could help with. Does anyone know a good
> place/community/group to join?_

I mentioned this to a public defender I know, and he'd be interested in
dropping you a line if you can give me a contact address. (HN still doesn't
seem to have direct messaging...)

~~~
nickalewis
Absolutely: nick@penmateapp.com. Please have him drop me a line!

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I've passed it on. FYI, you have a typo on your front page: "Mail letters d
photos right from your phone." Looks like a cool service, hope it works out!

~~~
nickalewis
Great! Also thanks for the heads up on the typo, fat-fingered that one ;)
Really appreciate your help. Thanks again.

------
jordanpg
That public defenders have scarce resources to do their job is about as
surprising as the fact that people living in poverty don't invest in the stock
market.

> My clients, like the millions of other people in the United States who are
> currently represented by public defenders, deserve better.

The poor are massively underserved, disenfranchised, disrespected, demoralized
and more in this country -- no doubt about it.

Unfortunately, the unfair justice system is step 1000 in a chain of events
with powerful institutional momentum.

We cannot even begin to address this without addressing economic disparity
first.

~~~
scottkduncan
I agree this issue is part of the larger trend you're talking about, but we
absolutely can start to address the imbalance of resource allocation in the
criminal justice system without solving the underlying economic disparities,
which are a generational challenge. With growing awareness of inequalities
throughout this system, articles like this highlight some simple changes we
could make to make the system a bit less unfair. In this case, it's simply a
few more lawyers and investigators.

~~~
jordanpg
No.

The analogy I made was very appropriate.

Shoring up the system with lawyers and investigators doesn't change the fact
that those who can't afford professional representation are getting second-
tier justice. Period.

Similarly, raising the minimum wage (for example) will never change the fact
that there are vast, lucrative swathes of the economy that are and always will
be unavailable to those without lots of spare capital. Period.

~~~
mapt
They're not getting second-tier justice. Second-tier justice would be _fine_
by them.

They're getting seventh-tier justice. Caseloads that average a single
attorney-hour. 98% plea rates. Victimless crimes. Police departments known to
fabricate evidence and permitted to persecute, detain, & search with no cause.
Years between arrest and trial. Prohibitive bail money. Confiscation of what
savings they have to pay a lawyer, on grounds that it's connected to a crime.
Tracking of all their communications. A tolerated culture of prison violence.
"Stop resisting". Asset forfeiture. Sentence lengths that shock the world.

 _We don 't need to fix all economic inequality to fix these things_, because
there are other times in our history and other places in the world that have
drastically less of these problems, without fixing economic inequality.

The drug war didn't just throw 1% of our population in prison, to satisfy
those needs it completely hollowed out due process; You need to have a wealthy
family behind you at this point to experience due process as envisioned by the
reformers that established it; If you live in the wrong neighborhood and have
the wrong color skin no amount of money will pay for it.

~~~
mapt
The way you address these things:

End the drug war entirely. End vice prosecutions. Focus on victimful crimes.

Increase the funds PD's get to the level DA's get. A PD's got a lot more to do
than a DA, because the DA has police officers behind it feeding it cases.
Funding parity is a Schelling Point.

Stop electing DA's, stop electing judges, stop electing sheriffs; "Tough on
crime" is the only campaign strategy these people use, and it's implied to
mean "Harsher than was the case last year". That outcome ceases to be remotely
_just_ after a few years.

Enfranchise felons with voting rights. The reasoning that they're incapable of
voting correctly stems directly from racial persecution.

Cameras everywhere.

Training in conflict _de_ -escalation, like the rest of the world's police
forces.

Reduce the prison sentences you give out substantially, and drastically
increase spending on the crime-avoidance strategies we pilloried as bleeding-
heart liberal ideas. Turns out the most strongly supported finding in
criminology is that they work a lot better than increased sentencing.

With the savings from all this prison reduction, build prisons that don't
inflict trauma on their prisoners, don't require violence to survive in, and
most importantly, don't require joining an organized criminal enterprise, a
prison gang, to be comfortable in. Gangs destroy what little benefit you get
from imprisoning people.

With what's left over, shift resources away from SWAT & drug enforcement, and
towards dramatic increases in the size of the detective force. Higher capture
rates beat longer sentences at deterring crime by a very large factor.

Rebuild at least parts of the public mental health system that we shut down
completely in the 70's.

~~~
kylebrown
Specifying a solution is easy; that's a purely technical exercise. The hard
problem is figuring out _how_ we get from where we are now (A) to where we
want to go (B); that's a political problem.

------
janesvilleseo
Slightly OT: I wonder what will happen when marijuna becomes legal across the
nation and body cameras are more widely used? Will there be a reduction in
overall prison population, will people get better representation due to video
evidence, will there be less bad apple cops? All of these may become true to
varying degrees. It will be interesting to see how we as a society handle
these issues in the future.

~~~
newjersey
I remember an incident where a police car hit the car in front of it in slow
speed. Other police officers arrived on the scene and basically told the
officer to stay quiet and tried to pin the incident on the woman driving the
car ahead. All of this was recorded by the police dashboard camera.

Now, you'd think I am trying to say that dashboard cameras are great and the
problem is solved when police officers have to carry body cameras. Well, no.
It is not even half the battle. Even if we get a system where we trust a
police officer's words the same as that of an accused, the defendant still
needs to have legal support that will work hard to get the footage and more
importantly a police force that is willing to work with defendants in giving
them the evidence the defense needs to undermine the prosecution's case.

The main problem is the blue code of silence where police officers fear
speaking out against other police officers for fear of retaliation. I am
afraid this is a systemic problem with no easy solution. Who watches the
watchers?

Edit: Here is some more details on the case.

From NBC Miami [http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Cops-Set-Up-Woman-
After-C...](http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Cops-Set-Up-Woman-After-
Crash.html)

> The disturbing video shows Alexandra Torrensvilas, 23, handcuffed in the
> back of the squad car as the officers get their stories straight on what
> they are going to say happened.

> Officer Joel Francisco, 36, an 11-year veteran, crashed into the back of
> Torrensvilas' vehicle at a light on February 17 at midnight. The cop radioed
> to other officers who converged on the scene and hatched a way to bail
> Francisco out.

> Officer Dewey Pressley, 42, arrives and questions Torrensvilas, who tells
> him that she has been drinking. The 21-year veteran officer seizes the
> opportunity and arrests her for DUI. But the plot thickens from there.

> The cops begin to brainstorm believable excuses for the accident.

From [http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/crime-law/two-
fired-h...](http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/crime-law/two-fired-
hollywood-cops-jailed-charged-with-fal-1/nL7Td/)

> Pressley, a Hollywood police officer for 22 years, and Francisco were fired
> in January. So were three other Police Department employees who were at the
> crash scene: Sgt. Andrew Diaz, Community Service Officer Karim Thomas and
> crime scene technician Andrea Tomassi, none of whom have been charged in the
> case.

From [http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-04-09/news/fl-
disney-c...](http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-04-09/news/fl-disney-cop-
guilty-plea-20120409_1_alexandra-torrens-vilas-dewey-pressley-plea-deal)

> Neither Pressley nor Francisco mentioned in their written incident reports
> that Francisco was on his cellphone at the time of the crash. Both mentioned
> the cat.

> Pressley was acquitted of official misconduct, a felony, but convicted of
> falsifying records. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail and is free pending
> appeal.

> Francisco's deal matches the jury decision and the sentence in the Pressley
> case. Had he been convicted of all charges at trial, Francisco would have
> faced nearly 30 years in prison.

It seems like Lawyer larence Meltzer represented the accused in this case of
State v. Alexandra Torrens-Vilas according to
[http://www.avvo.com/attorneys/33316-fl-lawrence-
meltzer-1293...](http://www.avvo.com/attorneys/33316-fl-lawrence-
meltzer-1293731.html) . Do you imagine the state would volunteer this dash cam
tape if it had fallen on a overworked public defendant?

~~~
graycat
Easy solution: Put me on the jury. A police officer testifies and right away I
assume he's lying, because he can get away with it, because he likes the ego
boost, because he has given up his personal integrity, because of the "blue
code" of whatever, because he gets his jollies sticking people, whatever.

A police officer has less credibility than the defendant. Similarly for
prosecutor expert witnesses, police forensics, police crime lab work, etc.

In front of me, super tough, nearly impossible, for a public prosecutor with
just police evidence to convict anyone of anything. The prosecutor would be
wise never to use any evidence that in any way had anything to do with the
police.

Get some other, solid, clearly objective evidence or the defendant goes free.

And for _statistical_ evidence, I know some statistics, at an advanced level,
and doubt that there is a single prosecutor in the country who could even once
put on statistical evidence that I would find less than just fraudulent. E.g.,
lie detectors, finger prints, and much more -- garbage. DNA? Not from a crime
lab.

As soon as the prosecutor or one of their witnesses mentions prior police
record of the defendant, the defendant goes free. Why? Constitutional
protection against two convictions, or or even two trials, for the same event.
The issue is what the defendant did as charged this time -- whatever they did
in the past is just irrelevant. A second trial for an earlier event is
unconstitutional and an attempt at what I call _fraud_ and, thus, no more
reason to listen to the prosecutor. I call it _fraud_ : On a jury, I get to
call _fraud_ anyway I want, and I don't have to explain.

Have the defendant locked up for more than a week without trial? Violates the
constitutional guarantee of a speedy trial. Defendant goes free.

Defendant injured while in police custody, whether from the police, other
people in the jail, or just a brick falling out of the sky, violation of the
constitutional guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment and taking the
freedom of a person without due process, and the defendant goes free and wins
a civil case against the city, etc.

Can't take a person's freedom, not even for a day, without taking care of
them, e.g., having a social worker inform all their family, make sure their
house is secure and their kitty cat fed, etc. Fail to do that, and that
violates the constitutional guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment and
also punishment without due process -- defendant goes free.

There is an easy solution -- put me on the jury.

Then when the defendant goes free and brings a civil case against the
prosecutor and police, tough for the former defendant to lose that case. Have
the city, whatever, pay them the $5 million or whatever.

Net, in front of me, the police, prosecutors, etc. have to clean up their act,
scrub 100% clean, at least as in the Constitution, or the defendants will go
free, just as the founding fathers intended.

The police stopped the car because the driver failed to use a turn signal? BS.
Likely the police are lying, and in that case the stop was a case of
unconstitutional "unreasonable search". That's my view, and on the jury I get
to vote that way for any reason or no reason and don't have to explain my
reason.

A police officer killed an unarmed person? Deliberate, unprovoked, unexcusable
murder. Life or the chair.

The police have tracked mud all over our Constitution, and it's long time
since that was way too much.

Defending our Constitution is much of why we want police.

~~~
mratzloff
So your solution to systemic abuse is to put you, literally _you_ , on every
jury trial? Well, at least you're practical.

~~~
simoncion
If we can infect others with greycat's meme, we can dramatically reduce
greycat's workload. :)

------
Zigurd
If you want a shock, get on a jury. If you are lucky, one other jury member
might require more proof than a cop's say-so.

~~~
ricree
The last (and so far only) time I was called for jury duty, the judge's
instructions were very explicit that the word of a police officer was to be
given no special weight compared to other witnesses.

Jurors were questioned about this during the voir dire, and several people
were dismissed because of an admitted bias in favor of police testimony.

Obviously, this is a sample size of one and no generalizations can be drawn,
but it does stand as a counterexample.

~~~
Zigurd
Last time I served on a jury, the judge gave the same instruction regarding
police as witnesses. Nevertheless, the defendant had a heavy accent, and did
not testify in her defense. The prosecution presented their entire case
through the testimony of one policeman, who was shown to be wildly
exaggerating to the point of an outright lie in a key element of his
testimony. He never recanted or even corrected his testimony. Yet the first
vote was massively in favor of convicting. Scary!

------
rectang
But if we didn't convict the innocent, public prosecutors couldn't exhort the
public into voting them back into office on the basis of an absurdly high
conviction rate!

~~~
fsloth
Why is a conviction rate a key performance indicator? I thought the western
justice system existed mainly to inhibit crime, and if conviction rates are
high, the system is not doing a very good job at inhibiting it.

~~~
malka
> I thought the western justice system existed mainly to inhibit crime

Personally I think the western justice system is more about pusishing
crimimals than inhibiting crime.

~~~
fsloth
I live in a western country (Finland) where crime inhibition seems still to be
the main purpose of the justice system - although there is constant discussion
about "getting tougher on crime".

------
PhasmaFelis
A close friend of mine is a public defender, and gave me some disturbing
stats.

According to the American Bar Association, it is unethical for a defense
lawyer to take more than 400 cases a year; 350 if dealing with juvenile cases;
three if they're capital (death-penalty) cases. Every PD my friend knows
regularly goes double those limits, because they have no choice and the states
aren't interested in upholding the ABA's limits.

------
deckar01
> When people ask how to push back against police misconduct, how to decrease
> the costs of mass incarceration and how to ensure fairer treatment of our
> nation’s most disenfranchised citizens, part of the answer lies in fully
> funding public defender’s offices and enabling us to represent our clients
> in a meaningful manner.

If the justice system is a funnel, these public defenders are at the very
bottom. Adequate funding may relieve pressure, but the long term solution is a
better filter at the very top. One solution:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9802861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9802861)

------
chrismcb
"At that point, he realized that the client had never been served to appear
for the court date on which he allegedly jumped bail." Why is it the public
defender had to notice that? Why didn't someone else notice, why was he even
arrested in the first place? There are more problems with the system...

------
a3n
> Our office represents 85 percent of the people charged with crimes in
> Orleans Parish but has an annual budget about a third the size of the
> district attorney’s.

Clearly the state has weighted things for maximum convictions.

Shouldn't public defenders have exactly the same budget as prosecutors?

EDIT: I meant budget per case.

------
studentrob
It is infuriating to hear that those who have stood up for the poor feel they
are not able to do their best.

I hope some improvements can be made as a result of this excellent article!

------
jakobdabo
He is doing a good job representing his client. His client is the one who pays
him, the State, lobbied by the for-profit prisons.

~~~
kndyry
Ms. Peng's client is most certainly not the State. As a public defense
attorney, her clients truly are the accused unable to retain private legal
services - the indigent. As Ms. Peng argues, the service provided by public
defenders is a constitutional right, not to mention one of the fundamental
elements in a system designed to provide for adequate and universal
representation. That the State issues her salary is a direct result of the
constitutionality of the services public defense offices provide, and is the
mandated prerogative of the State in due compliance with the Constitution. Ms.
Peng has granted us an insider view of what is becoming an increasingly
slippery slope. We cannot eschew the _rightful_ defense of any group, no
matter how "marginalized," and presume in the same breath that those criteria
will never broaden or change. Nor can we expect legal disenfranchisement, and
an inevitable increase in unjust incarceration, to resolve anything.

~~~
jakobdabo
I'm trying to outline the problem that the State is not interested in funding
those public defense offices. They are doing the absolute minimum required by
the Constitution. In contrast, look how well-funded and heavily-equipped are
the police and other law enforcement agencies.

