[Vision2020] The niceties of public defense

[Debbie Gray]

Ted

Have you BEEN to court lately (to observe)? Maybe you should try it. I can
assure you that public defenders and law enforcement are hardly working
hand in hand to make sure to shaft innocent citizens. Are you assuming
that the people that become public defenders are less than competent? Have
you looked at their case load? How many people they 'successfully' defend?
Or are you just flinging out a bunch of uninformed assumptions you have
gleaned from watching too much TV? Apparently, in your world, all cops are
corrupt, all accused are innocent, all public defenders are more than
willing to send their clients down the river in order to rake in the 'huge
bucks' with little effort and who knows what you think of judges and jury
members... Are there any 'criminals' that have committed actual crimes in
your world? Or are they all being framed and but for an Alan Dershowitz,
they are shafted? And the majority of 'good lawyers' are too busy chasing
the dime to represent Joe Six Pack. How does that make them 'good'
lawyers? How do you define 'good'? You are forgetting that many people
give up higher paying jobs to do other things that are important to their
own social conscience.

Give me a break...


Debbie

On Thu, 8 Jan 2004 Aldoussoma@aol.com wrote:

>
> Auntiestablishment et.al.
>
> Oh, but indeed, the public defenders are there to make life easy for law
> enforcement and to make friends with the prosecutor.  Can you imagine what would
> happen to our law enforcement and legal system if public defenders were like
> Alan Dershowitz?  Cops would be testifying in court so often, and be charged
> with misconduct with such regularity, that the Feds might have to send 87 billion
> to America's cities as an infrastructure rebuilding grant to help secure
> Democracy in the USA.
>
> And being buddy buddy with the prosecutor, swapping deals on cases so both
> the PD and prosecutor get what they want, helps keep both sides happy.  If
> public defenders were defending all their cases aggressively, the courts could not
> handle the work.  Oh, sure, there are innocent people who get sent up the
> river, while some real scary bad asses go free, but as long as the voters think
> the prosecutor is taking on the dangerous crime, i. e. the stuff the media
> pushes to exploit the hysteria of the public to push the nielsen ratings and sell
> advertising, then the prosecutor is an electable savior.
>
> Till we regulate the cost of lawyers to bring it closer to what the average
> Joe or Jane can afford, we will never have a fair legal system.  Not many
> public defenders will work hard on a defense with the pay they get, and the best
> lawyers, with only a few exceptions, go for the money, which means they are NOT
> doing PD cases.
>
> Ted
>

Debbie

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  Debbie Gray      dgray@uidaho.edu      http://www.uidaho.edu/~dgray/
  We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to
  have the life that is waiting for us." --Joseph Campbell
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