Missionaries of the Sacred

In a landmark decision in 1963 (Gideon V. Wainwright), the US Supreme court concluded that states must provide lawyers to people who cannot afford a lawyer (in criminal cases, not civil cases). Providing a lawyer helps make sure that people with low incomes have the same access to a fair trial (a right which is guaranteed by the 6th Amendment of the US Constitution) as people who can afford to hire a private attorney. Yet problems remain. Some states do not adequately fund public defender offices. Some public defenders have such large caseloads that they cannot adequately prepare for each case and may have very little contact with their client. For instance, a 2008 report by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association found that in Hamilton County (Ohio), even by low estimates, misdemeanor staff attorneys were handling nearly 2.5 times the maximum recommended case-load, and that on average, a public defender could only spend one hour and 42 minutes per misdemeanor case, which included trials.

Researchers from the University of Michigan studied 340 exonerations of innocent defendants and discovered the following direct causes of wrongful convictions: mistaken eyewitness identifications, perjury, and false confessions under police pressures. Another study, conducted by a law professor at the University of Virginia, looked at the first 200 cases of people who were exoneated by DNA evidence. Over half these cases involved false forensic evidence, yet the innocent defendants were unable to successfully challenge the false evidence in the appellate courts. Inadequate legal representation is one factor. For instance, in the case of Jimmy Ray Bromgard, who spent 14 years in prison for a brutal rape before DNA evidence proved that he was innocent, the defense lawyer gave no opening statement, did not prepare a closing statement, didn’t file an appeal, and so on.

There is also evidence of a connection between inadequate legal representation and the death penalty. In 2001, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that 20% of the 84 people who faced execution in that state during the past 20 years were represented by lawyers who were disbarred, suspended or arrested at some point in their careers. The state’s disbarment rate for attorneys is less than 1%. Anecdotal evidence shows cases where the defendant who was found guilty and sentenced to death was clearly not well represented. In Texas, Carl Johnson’s lawyer, who was court-appointed, slept on the job. Johnson was executed in 1995. In Oklahoma, Ronald Williamson’s court-appointed lawyer neglected to present evidence that another person had confessed to the crime. Williamson was sentenced to death, but the charges were later dropped.