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Full-Text Articles in Law
Ensuring The Ethical Representation Of Clients In The Face Of Excessive Caseloads, Peter A. Joy
Ensuring The Ethical Representation Of Clients In The Face Of Excessive Caseloads, Peter A. Joy
Missouri Law Review
This Article is divided into three substantive parts. First, I begin with a short discussion of the most important criminal justice right guaranteed to each of us under the Bill of Rights - the Sixth Amendment right to assistance of counsel. For most Americans, the right to counsel is obtained through indigent defense providers, and the quality of the representation is inextricably tied to three lesser known rights, or perhaps wishes, found in the Public Defender Bill of Rights: "[t]he right to meaningful, weighted caseload standards"; "[t]he right to judges who understand my [the public defender's] role in the [justice] …
Protecting The Innocent: Part Of The Solution For Inadequate Funding For Defenders, Not A Panacea For Targeting Justice, Robert P. Mosteller
Protecting The Innocent: Part Of The Solution For Inadequate Funding For Defenders, Not A Panacea For Targeting Justice, Robert P. Mosteller
Missouri Law Review
In this Article, I examine an important connection between society's concern with innocence - fueled by numerous wrongful convictions revealed by newly available DNA testing - and past and future progressive changes in criminal justice practices and policy. In Why Defense Attorneys Cannot, But Do, Care About Innocence (Caring About Innocence), I argued that, while the drive to protect the innocent has the potential to divide progressives in their support of indigent defense if targeting reforms only at the innocent is seen as possible, concern for innocence should instead drive a renewed effort to secure adequate funding for representing all …
Missouri's Public Defender Crisis: Shouldering The Burden Alone, Sean D. O'Brien
Missouri's Public Defender Crisis: Shouldering The Burden Alone, Sean D. O'Brien
Missouri Law Review
Though this Article criticizes the quality of defense provided by overburdened defenders, it is written with the hope that adequate resources may one day make it possible for them to perform their vital function effectively. Public defenders perform socially and legally significant work every day. They are not to blame when the conditions under which they labor make it impossible to do their jobs. To fix this broken system, Missouri must first understand the scope and roots of the problem. Part II of this Article discusses Missouri's reluctant implementation of right to counsel since Gideon v. Wainwright and the State's …
Foreword, Rodney Uphoff
Foreword, Rodney Uphoff
Missouri Law Review
Even though almost everyone concedes that the caseload crisis in Missouri is real, the dire state budget situation makes a significant infusion of new resources virtually impossible. So if Missouri, like most other states, is truly broke, then realistically can the state find the funds needed to fix its broken indigent defense system? That was the question at the heart of the Symposium. The Symposium presenters and commentators, most of whom had worked at some point in their career as a public defender, brought a wealth of experience to the discussion. While the presentations and comments made that day, together …
State Constitutional Challenges To Indigent Defense Systems, Stephen F. Hanlon
State Constitutional Challenges To Indigent Defense Systems, Stephen F. Hanlon
Missouri Law Review
For many years, the primary vehicle that advocates used to protect the fundamental right of the accused to the effective assistance of counsel was the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as incorporated to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. For some time, most obviously during the Warren Court years, this federal strategy proved fruitful; indeed, it resulted in a series of landmark decisions by the United States Supreme Court that impact indigent defense systems to this day. A subsequent sea change in the Court's jurisprudence, however, which placed great emphasis on federalism, particularly the doctrines of justiciability and …
Commentary, Norman Lefstein
Commentary, Norman Lefstein
Missouri Law Review
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am delighted to be here and to have the opportunity to comment on my colleagues' remarks. I also welcome the chance to share with you my perspectives about indigent defense in the United States and here in Missouri.
Raising The Bar: Standards-Based Training, Supervision, And Evaluation, Adele Bernhard
Raising The Bar: Standards-Based Training, Supervision, And Evaluation, Adele Bernhard
Missouri Law Review
In this short Article, I sketch the methodology my colleagues and I at Pace Law School use to incorporate practice standards into our clinical teaching and reflect on how a standards-based teaching paradigm could be adapted to the training, supervision, and evaluation of public defenders. Then, I briefly consider how standards and standards-based teaching assist in the administration of assigned counsel plans and in the evaluation of the performance of public defender organizations. Although this Article does not cover any of these topics in depth, my goal is to introduce the reader to a standards-based approach to teaching and suggest …
Public Defender Elections And Popular Control Over Criminal Justice, Ronald F. Wright
Public Defender Elections And Popular Control Over Criminal Justice, Ronald F. Wright
Missouri Law Review
Part I of this Article reviews the existing evidence about the election of criminal justice officials and presents new evidence about the campaigns and outcomes in public defender elections. Voters respond to candidates for the public defender's office much in the same way that they react to candidates for the prosecutor's office: they choose the incumbent, even more often than they do for legislators and chief executives.2 The candidates themselves also behave fairly similarly in public defender and prosecutor election campaigns. Both the prosecutor and the defender candidates spend a disappointing amount of time in their campaign speeches discussing the …
Epiphenomenal Indigent Defense, Darryl K. Brown
Epiphenomenal Indigent Defense, Darryl K. Brown
Missouri Law Review
There are some much-studied, recurring social events and behaviors that, although centrally important to public policy and social life, have proven intractable to explanation and prediction. As currently salient examples, consider stock market crashes and recessions. Economists cannot consistently see them coming nor explain them after the fact in consistent detail. Another example is crime rates, which rise, and in recent decades fall, without any discernable strong causal link to familiar variables such as employment or imprisonment rates. This Article describes why we can add state funding for indigent defense counsel to that list and what this conclusion means for …