You Have the Right to an Attorney

The right to an attorney is one of the most fundamental cornerstones
of the American criminal justice system.  In Boston’s Suffolk County,
the Comittee for Public Counsel Sercices, which provides public defenders
to the Suffolk courts, has been threatening to stop defending clients
because they are owed $15.4 million in back pay. Yesterday they made
good on that threat, refusing to take any new idigent clients.

State lawmakers hastily passed an emergency funding bill, but the governor,
facing a billion-dollar deficit, has so far refused to sign, and the
lawyers refuse to take any new clients until he does. As the courts are
paralyzed, the pointing fingers are not, "This is a conundrum, not
of the court’s, but of the committee’s," said Suffolk Superior
Court Judge Jeffrey Locke.

from the Boston Globe