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Week by week those facing criminal charges are making courtroom appearances only to be left with an all too familiar, “We don’t have any attorneys available for your case right
The Atlantic
Defend the Public Defenders
Their ability to hold on to their job should not depend on the same people they challenge in court.
March 13, 2021
Getty / The Atlantic
Public defense might be one of the rare professions in which doing one’s job too well can lead to being fired. The reasons for this are structural public defenders are tasked with an obligation they cannot fulfill without upsetting those tasked with helping them fulfill it and the system can be fixed structurally: by creating a state-level office whose job it is to defend public defenders.
Consider the case of two public defenders from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Dean Beer and Keisha Hudson, who say they were fired last year after filing an amicus brief describing as unacceptable and unconstitutional court decisions regarding bail that harmed their clients. (The county board responsible for their firing has not publicly commented on the personnel matter and did not respond to a request for comment
you know, prisons and jails are intended to be very dehumanizing and difficult places to exist, and that s part of the punishment of prison. of course, we have far too many people in prison and we have the biggest prison population in the world, the biggest prison population in human history. so we have somehow become the most punitive nation in the world. you say, piper, that having a good attorney really made a difference in your case. explain what you mean by that. oh, you know, if every american who is accused of a crime actually had their sixth amendment rights respected, our prison system and our jails would look very, very different. but, in fact, 80% of people who are accused of a crime in this country are too poor to hire a lawyer to defend them in court, so they re going to rely on our public defense system, and there are amazing public defenders out there, but there are also a lot of flaws in the public defense