Americans have a right to be defended in criminal trials and the government has to provide a lawyer if the accused criminal cannot afford one. But do people have a right to a competent lawyer who has the time and resources to focus their attention on the case at hand? A right to a lawyer doesn't make much sense otherwise, but that's not the situation in much of America.

Don Herzog writes:

The American Bar Association's recent report sketched a system we can no longer politely describe as creaking or overworked. They reminded us that defense attorneys "should not accept workloads that, by reason of their excessive size, interfere with the rendering of quality representation or lead to the breach of professional obligations." You might be skeptical about setting strict numerical guidelines. I am: some cases are harder than others, some slumber for months at a time, and so on. But it's hard to be skeptical about the claim that PDs have way too much work.

The ABA quoted the head of New York's Defenders Association: "Caseloads are radically out of whack in some places in New York. There are caseloads per year in which a lawyer handles 1,000, 1,200, 1,600 cases." If you suspect that some criminal suspects must be waiting for legal assistance, you're right — and you should remember where they wait. "There’s a story of a woman in Gulfport, Mississippi who was in jail eleven months before a lawyer was appointed, was in jail two more months before the lawyer came to see her, and was in jail one more month before they went to court and pled guilty to time served, all for shoplifting merchandise worth $72. She was in jail a total of fourteen months." Not the least heartbreak in these cases is that sometimes if you plead guilty, you get off for time served already, but if you plead innocent, you may have to wait longer in jail for a full trial.

The government spends quite a lot of money on prosecution, but trials aren't fair unless the government spends as much on public defenders. There is no excuse for people to sit in jail for months and months simply because the government doesn't have public defenders with the time to handle the cases. This is not a justice system.

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