State must bolster poorly funded public defense system
By Tarra Simmons and Jason Schwarz / For The Herald
When Clarence Earl Gideon wrote from a Florida jail that he had been deprived of his 6th Amendment right to counsel at his criminal trial, he set in motion a chain of events that would change American law and culture.
Gideon v. Wainwright, decided March 1963 by the U.S. Supreme Court, requires the government to provide lawyers at public expense to the accused facing jail or loss of liberty.
Now, 60 years later, Washington, like other states, is at a public defense crossroads where the very promise of Gideon is threatened unless we take collective action. Next door, in Oregon, the public defense system, faced with overwork and underfunding, collapsed, resulting in hundreds of criminal cases being dismissed. If such a crisis were to occur in Washington it would likely affect someone you know; more than 70 million Americans have been convicted of a crime; 1 in 3 families will have a family member with a criminal record; nearly half of Black American males and 40 percent of white males will have been arrested by the age of 23. With strong leadership and public support, Washington can learn from Oregon’s missteps and assure that our public defense protects those in need of counsel.
Today public defenders are not just lawyers, but a team of professionals representing the accused, including social workers, paralegals, legal assistants and investigators. They represent parents in hearings where the state is attempting to take away their children, children in At Risk Youth petitions, and ill people whom the state is seeking to involuntarily commit to a mental hospital. They are on-call 24 hours a day to speak to arrested youth, and they represent people in criminal and civil post-trial work.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-state-must-bolster-poorly-funded-public-defense-system/