Law Commons^™

Reinventing The Wheel: Constructing Ethical Approaches To State Indigent Legal Defense Systems, Bill Piatt

Faculty Articles

Indigent defense remains in a state of crisis. Almost fifty years after the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, lack of funding, favoritism, inefficiency, and poorly-designed indigent-defense plans plague the system, which can best be characterized as being in a state of disrepair. As a result, accused indigent individuals, a vulnerable population, suffer from a lack of adequate representation. This Article reviews the history and implementation of various indigent-defense systems and examines the ethical issues arising from their operation. It offers a guide to reconstructing a model system, including the suggestion that attorneys first recommit the profession to …

The Mentally Disordered Criminal Defendant At The Supreme Court: A Decade In Review, Dora W. Klein

Faculty Articles

In the past decade, at least eight cases involving issues at the intersection of criminal law and clinical psychology have reached the United States Supreme Court. Of particular interest are those cases which concern three general topics: the culpability of juvenile offenders; mental states and the criminal process, including the presentation of mental disorder evidence, competency to stand trial, and competency to be executed; and the preventive detention of convicted sex offenders.

Of these eight cases, two cases cases adopted categorical exclusions from certain kinds of punishment, three involved questions about mental states (and in two of these the Court …