If You Cannot Afford an Attorney, Go Home

As even the Dowbrigade’s foreign lawyer students know, the Sixth
Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees "In all criminal prosecutions
the accused
shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial" and according to
the Miranda declaration if a suspect can’t afford a lawyer, the state
will provide him with one.

This has given rise to the American institution of Public Defenders. Sounds
like a cartoon squadron of super-heroes protecting the population at
large, but the reality is almost as colorful. The truth is there are
many talented attorneys who start out as public defenders. Men and women
from more humble background, lacking in "connections" or from second-tier
law schools lacking invitations to join big firms, often start out as
court-appointed attorneys to build up a clientele, get to know the criminal
element, so to speak, and start to earn a reputation which would induce
the more successful among that criminal element to actually pay a decent
rate for a legal leg up.

Because being a public defender is no day at the beach. The
working conditions are lousy, the hours irregular, and the remuneration
is insignificant
for a self-respecting professional with lawyerly lifestyle or expenses.
As
a result, the only
people who stay in the Public Defender’s office long are the hopelessly
altruistic and the legal losers without the wherewithal or ambition
to start climbing the legal ladder out of the PD pit.

These two American legal legacies, speedy trials and public defenders,
are at loggerheads right now in Massachusetts, where the majority of
the PD’s are on an informal strike for higher wages. Until this year
they made $30 an hour, which has been raised 25% to $37.50.  Still
not enough to buy a vacation home, join a country club or make meaningful
contributions to the candidates of one’s choice. Certainly not
enough to put your kid through college, let alone law school.

The shortage of court-appointed lawyers has gotten so acute that
courts are starting to release recently arrested suspected felons due
to their
inability to provide them with lawyers or speedy trials…..

Calling a recent $7.50 hourly increase in their compensation by the
Legislature too meager, hundreds of private lawyers are still refusing
to take court appointed cases for poor criminal defendants, which many
have refused to take for months. The 2,500 or so private lawyers who
take such cases are among the lowest-paid in the nation, officials said.

In a case brought by public defenders in Hampden County, where the shortage
has been particularly acute, the SJC recently ruled that defendants could
not be jailed for more than seven days without a lawyer and that charges
could be dismissed if they still had no lawyer after 45 days.

After the first three defendants were ordered released without bail
Monday, Reilly said that the SJC and the committee were ignoring
less severe
remedies.

from the
Boston Globe