23 ms·

Public defender: it’s impossible for me to do a good job representing my clients

233 points by ikeboy 11y ago

jordanpg 11y ago
That public defenders have scarce resources to do their job is about as surprising as the fact that people living in poverty don't invest in the stock market. > My clients, like the millions of other people in the United States who are currently represented by public defenders, deserve better. The poor are massively underserved, disenfranchised, disrespected, demoralized and more in this country -- no doubt about it. Unfortunately, the unfair justice system is step 1000 in a chain of events with powerful institutional momentum. We cannot even begin to address this without addressing economic disparity first.
- scottkduncan 11y ago
  I agree this issue is part of the larger trend you're talking about, but we absolutely can start to address the imbalance of resource allocation in the criminal justice system without solving the underlying economic disparities, which are a generational challenge. With growing awareness of inequalities throughout this system, articles like this highlight some simple changes we could make to make the system a bit less unfair. In this case, it's simply a few more lawyers and investigators.
  - jordanpg 11y ago
    No. The analogy I made was very appropriate. Shoring up the system with lawyers and investigators doesn't change the fact that those who can't afford professional representation are getting second-tier justice. Period. Similarly, raising the minimum wage (for example) will never change the fact that there are vast, lucrative swathes of the economy that are and always will be unavailable to those without lots of spare capital. Period.
    - scottkduncan 11y ago
      Admittedly based on anecdotes, the public defenders I have met are highly-educated, committed, creative professionals who typically choose this profession because they see the same structural forces but believe they can make a difference at the individual level. These are not second-tier individuals. If we give them the tools, resources, and support they need to actually do their job then there is no doubt in mind this would be a positive, albeit small, step in the right direction.
      - jordanpg 11y ago
        I'm sure most public defenders are marvelous public servants. But are you arguing that those who are forced to use the PD because they can't afford a lawyer are getting the same deal as someone hiring a professional defense team? That seems to be self-evidently false to me.
        adebtlawyer 11y ago
        > I'm sure most public defenders are marvelous public servants. Why? The horrible pay and insane workloads don't attract bright people.
    - mapt 11y ago
      They're not getting second-tier justice. Second-tier justice would be fine by them. They're getting seventh-tier justice. Caseloads that average a single attorney-hour. 98% plea rates. Victimless crimes. Police departments known to fabricate evidence and permitted to persecute, detain, & search with no cause. Years between arrest and trial. Prohibitive bail money. Confiscation of what savings they have to pay a lawyer, on grounds that it's connected to a crime. Tracking of all their communications. A tolerated culture of prison violence. "Stop resisting". Asset forfeiture. Sentence lengths that shock the world. We don't need to fix all economic inequality to fix these things, because there are other times in our history and other places in the world that have drastically less of these problems, without fixing economic inequality. The drug war didn't just throw 1% of our population in prison, to satisfy those needs it completely hollowed out due process; You need to have a wealthy family behind you at this point to experience due process as envisioned by the reformers that established it; If you live in the wrong neighborhood and have the wrong color skin no amount of money will pay for it.
- grossvogel 11y ago
  The criminal justice system is one of the biggest institutional forces perpetuating that economic disparity. http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/04/08/3643497/california-courts-are-just-as-messed-up-as-fergusons/ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/04/08/3643497/californ... https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-challenges-debtors-prisons-across-michigan https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-challenges-debtors-prisons-ac...
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  It is possible to work on several problems at once. If we're not allowed to even begin improving public defenders until we have completely solved poverty, the poor are going to be waiting for justice for a long, long time.
jakobdabo 11y ago
He is doing a good job representing his client. His client is the one who pays him, the State, lobbied by the for-profit prisons.
- skybrian 11y ago
  She, actually,
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- dannyr 11y ago
  The author's name is Tina Peng. She.
- kndyry 11y ago
  Ms. Peng's client is most certainly not the State. As a public defense attorney, her clients truly are the accused unable to retain private legal services - the indigent. As Ms. Peng argues, the service provided by public defenders is a constitutional right, not to mention one of the fundamental elements in a system designed to provide for adequate and universal representation. That the State issues her salary is a direct result of the constitutionality of the services public defense offices provide, and is the mandated prerogative of the State in due compliance with the Constitution. Ms. Peng has granted us an insider view of what is becoming an increasingly slippery slope. We cannot eschew the rightful defense of any group, no matter how "marginalized," and presume in the same breath that those criteria will never broaden or change. Nor can we expect legal disenfranchisement, and an inevitable increase in unjust incarceration, to resolve anything.
  - jakobdabo 11y ago
    I'm trying to outline the problem that the State is not interested in funding those public defense offices. They are doing the absolute minimum required by the Constitution. In contrast, look how well-funded and heavily-equipped are the police and other law enforcement agencies.
janesvilleseo 11y ago
Slightly OT: I wonder what will happen when marijuna becomes legal across the nation and body cameras are more widely used? Will there be a reduction in overall prison population, will people get better representation due to video evidence, will there be less bad apple cops? All of these may become true to varying degrees. It will be interesting to see how we as a society handle these issues in the future.
- newjersey 11y ago
  I remember an incident where a police car hit the car in front of it in slow speed. Other police officers arrived on the scene and basically told the officer to stay quiet and tried to pin the incident on the woman driving the car ahead. All of this was recorded by the police dashboard camera. Now, you'd think I am trying to say that dashboard cameras are great and the problem is solved when police officers have to carry body cameras. Well, no. It is not even half the battle. Even if we get a system where we trust a police officer's words the same as that of an accused, the defendant still needs to have legal support that will work hard to get the footage and more importantly a police force that is willing to work with defendants in giving them the evidence the defense needs to undermine the prosecution's case. The main problem is the blue code of silence where police officers fear speaking out against other police officers for fear of retaliation. I am afraid this is a systemic problem with no easy solution. Who watches the watchers? Edit: Here is some more details on the case. From NBC Miami http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Cops-Set-Up-Woman-After-Crash.html http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Cops-Set-Up-Woman-After-C... > The disturbing video shows Alexandra Torrensvilas, 23, handcuffed in the back of the squad car as the officers get their stories straight on what they are going to say happened. > Officer Joel Francisco, 36, an 11-year veteran, crashed into the back of Torrensvilas' vehicle at a light on February 17 at midnight. The cop radioed to other officers who converged on the scene and hatched a way to bail Francisco out. > Officer Dewey Pressley, 42, arrives and questions Torrensvilas, who tells him that she has been drinking. The 21-year veteran officer seizes the opportunity and arrests her for DUI. But the plot thickens from there. > The cops begin to brainstorm believable excuses for the accident. From http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/crime-law/two-fired-hollywood-cops-jailed-charged-with-fal-1/nL7Td/ http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/crime-law/two-fired-h... > Pressley, a Hollywood police officer for 22 years, and Francisco were fired in January. So were three other Police Department employees who were at the crash scene: Sgt. Andrew Diaz, Community Service Officer Karim Thomas and crime scene technician Andrea Tomassi, none of whom have been charged in the case. From http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-04-09/news/fl-disney-cop-guilty-plea-20120409_1_alexandra-torrens-vilas-dewey-pressley-plea-deal http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-04-09/news/fl-disney-c... > Neither Pressley nor Francisco mentioned in their written incident reports that Francisco was on his cellphone at the time of the crash. Both mentioned the cat. > Pressley was acquitted of official misconduct, a felony, but convicted of falsifying records. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail and is free pending appeal. > Francisco's deal matches the jury decision and the sentence in the Pressley case. Had he been convicted of all charges at trial, Francisco would have faced nearly 30 years in prison. It seems like Lawyer larence Meltzer represented the accused in this case of State v. Alexandra Torrens-Vilas according to http://www.avvo.com/attorneys/33316-fl-lawrence-meltzer-1293731.html http://www.avvo.com/attorneys/33316-fl-lawrence-meltzer-1293... . Do you imagine the state would volunteer this dash cam tape if it had fallen on a overworked public defendant?
axxl 11y ago
> I’ve been asked by my family members, my friends and my hairdresser why I represent criminals. That's the most sad part of this article to me. Many people have lost innocent-until-proven-guilty in their minds. Tina has a good response in the article: > The answer is that I, and other public defenders, don’t represent criminals. We represent poor people who are facing criminal charges — charges on which they are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. We represent members of our communities who have a right to real and meaningful legal representation, even if they are poor.
- sanderjd 11y ago
  Coming from a family of lawyers, I first realized that the belief in everyone's right to representation is not universal when many people I knew reacted vitriolically to lawyers representing inmates at Guantanamo. I really like the answer you quoted from the article, but it still relies on appealing to sympathy for the people being represented. But even those who deserve no sympathy deserve representation!
  - fsloth 11y ago
    "many people I knew reacted vitriolically to lawyers representing inmates at Guantanamo" This attitude that "criminals deserve no justice" that is pervasive nearly everywhere amazes me. I cannot understand why people really think any system is so foolproof as to charge only those guilty.
    - asuffield 11y ago
      > I cannot understand why people really think any system is so foolproof as to charge only those guilty. A cynical observer might make a connection between the people who think that and the inability of the system to charge only those guilty.
    - throwawayaway 11y ago
      It's relatively easy to get people on your side of that debate. Tell them about how often people who have been convicted to face the death penalty are later exonerated.
Zigurd 11y ago
If you want a shock, get on a jury. If you are lucky, one other jury member might require more proof than a cop's say-so.
- jonathanjaeger 11y ago
  I was on a criminal jury trial in Manhattan in May. The guy was being charged with multiple assault and resisting arrest charges against cops. The incident happened a couple years ago. It was basically the cops' word vs. the defendant. You could tell both sides were not telling the whole truth. It's a much longer story, but in the end we found him not guilty for all those charges. Luckily I had a rational, sane jury that no matter what you think it was clear there wasn't proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if you don't have that kind of jury..
- ricree 11y ago
  The last (and so far only) time I was called for jury duty, the judge's instructions were very explicit that the word of a police officer was to be given no special weight compared to other witnesses. Jurors were questioned about this during the voir dire, and several people were dismissed because of an admitted bias in favor of police testimony. Obviously, this is a sample size of one and no generalizations can be drawn, but it does stand as a counterexample.
  - graycat 11y ago
    Gee, I'd never make it past voir dire! I'd give the word of a police officer "special weight" -- assume he was bitterly, hatefully, fraudulently lying through his teeth, even if just for the fun of it.
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    Last time I served on a jury, the judge gave the same instruction regarding police as witnesses. Nevertheless, the defendant had a heavy accent, and did not testify in her defense. The prosecution presented their entire case through the testimony of one policeman, who was shown to be wildly exaggerating to the point of an outright lie in a key element of his testimony. He never recanted or even corrected his testimony. Yet the first vote was massively in favor of convicting. Scary!
rectang 11y ago
But if we didn't convict the innocent, public prosecutors couldn't exhort the public into voting them back into office on the basis of an absurdly high conviction rate!
- fsloth 11y ago
  Why is a conviction rate a key performance indicator? I thought the western justice system existed mainly to inhibit crime, and if conviction rates are high, the system is not doing a very good job at inhibiting it.
  - malka 11y ago
    > I thought the western justice system existed mainly to inhibit crime Personally I think the western justice system is more about pusishing crimimals than inhibiting crime.
    - tete 11y ago
      I think malka meant both officially and "how it should be".
    - fsloth 11y ago
      I live in a western country (Finland) where crime inhibition seems still to be the main purpose of the justice system - although there is constant discussion about "getting tougher on crime".
nickalewis 11y ago
Kind of Off-Topic, but I emailed Tina immediately upon reading this last week. It really moved me. I'd like to chat with any lawyers working as Public Defenders, pro bono or otherwise, to get a better idea of the day to day challenges they have with managing case load and communicating with clients. Things technoloy could help with. Does anyone know a good place/community/group to join? I ask because myself, friends, and close family have all had experience with a Public defenders office at some point, the article is spot on about many clients being poor, assumed guilty, and lacking resources. I'm currently helping families navigate the criminal justice system with a company I started , but it's been on my head (and heart) to begin looking at providing resources to PD offices as well, as it's so important that these cases, particular low-level and drug offenses, are handled efficiently. I would love to get a better idea of the day-to-day challenges faced by an active public defender. Also if anyone is interested in a amazing documentary about the courage and dedication PD's have check out Gideon's Army: http://m.imdb.com/title/tt2179053/ http://m.imdb.com/title/tt2179053/. I think it's on Netflix.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  > Kind of Off-Topic, but I emailed Tina immediately upon reading this last week. It really moved me. I'd like to chat with any lawyers working as Public Defenders, pro bono or otherwise, to get a better idea of the day to day challenges they have with managing case load and communicating with clients. Things technoloy could help with. Does anyone know a good place/community/group to join? I mentioned this to a public defender I know, and he'd be interested in dropping you a line if you can give me a contact address. (HN still doesn't seem to have direct messaging...)
  - nickalewis 11y ago
    Absolutely: nick@penmateapp.com. Please have him drop me a line!
    - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
      I've passed it on. FYI, you have a typo on your front page: "Mail letters d photos right from your phone." Looks like a cool service, hope it works out!
deckar01 11y ago
> When people ask how to push back against police misconduct, how to decrease the costs of mass incarceration and how to ensure fairer treatment of our nation’s most disenfranchised citizens, part of the answer lies in fully funding public defender’s offices and enabling us to represent our clients in a meaningful manner. If the justice system is a funnel, these public defenders are at the very bottom. Adequate funding may relieve pressure, but the long term solution is a better filter at the very top. One solution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9802861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9802861
adanto6840 11y ago
Why isn't it legally mandated that the budgets for the District Attorney's office must be less than or equal to the budget for the Public Defender's? I'm sure there are valid reasons and what I'm suggesting may be unrealistic, but it sure seems like it'd nearly guarantee that we're upholding the intent of the Constitution if we did that, eh?
- chc 11y ago
  That is pretty much guaranteed to produce a poor allocation of funds. Every case requiring public defender resources will also require district attorney resources, but not every case requiring district attorney resources will require anything from a public defender, because a lot of people have their own lawyers.
  - adanto6840 11y ago
    Yeah, I realized that right after I posted. Seems easy enough to account for though, no? If 70% (or whatever XX% is) of cases are handled by a Public Defender, then you'd simply require that their funding is, at a minimum, 70% of the DA's funding...
  - nradov 11y ago
    Also the district attorney has to deal with a lot of cases where they decide to just drop charges. That takes resources as well.
  - segmondy 11y ago
    I think the defenders should have more. Usually when the DA decides to prosecute, they already have "evidence" Most of their work is done, all they have to do is present said evidence and in most cases win. The defenders tho have to work really hard to counter all and any evidence. e.g get a ticket from the police? that's evidence that you were speeding. you are paying the fine unless you put in effort to prove you were not. e.g. get arrested for drugs, guns. those will be seized, the DA will look at the evidence and prosecute. your lawyer, will have to do work to show that those are not yours, or that you were legally able to possess those, or some other way. it seems the public defenders do more work and should have the same amount of budget, if not more.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
A close friend of mine is a public defender, and gave me some disturbing stats. According to the American Bar Association, it is unethical for a defense lawyer to take more than 400 cases a year; 350 if dealing with juvenile cases; three if they're capital (death-penalty) cases. Every PD my friend knows regularly goes double those limits, because they have no choice and the states aren't interested in upholding the ABA's limits.
aadraple 11y ago
The justice system is deeply flawed but technology can help repair it. Let me explain. Legal work can be split up into two buckets – process based work and advisory work. The advisory work revolves around analysis, comparison and collaboration – distinctly human (for now) tasks. The bulk of legal work however is process based, which is repetitive, routine, administrative and could actually be done through the use of machine learning and AI. Examples of process-based work are document review and legal research. Document review is when parties to a case sort through and analyze the documents in their possession to determine if they are relevant to the case at hand. Legal research is the process of identifying and retrieving the necessary information lawyers need to support legal decision-making. If LegalTech was to do the lions share of a public defender's process based legal work, they would be able to focus their advisory work. This would allow a public defender to not only to defend more individuals but most importantly, to provide proper legal help to everyone they are defending. The inequalities and problems in the justice system could be seriously helped/fixed with better adoption and implementation of technology. The problem is that tech must be embraced not just by individual lawyers and defenders who it would help the most, but also by the decision makers themselves, government agencies/law firms, who have the final say on whether to bring tech into their organizations. The good news is that there are strides being made towards bringing in tech to augment lawyers capabilities with technology, the bad news is that no speed is fast enough as there are a ton of people who require proper legal representation right now that are missing out.
- kevinchen 11y ago
  I don't think technology will help things. Until we change our collective opinions about funding public defenders, better legal software will just cause public defenders' budget/headcounts to be reduced so that they are still taking on the same amount of work. It's like buying a bigger backpack/purse -- until you change your ideas about what is essential to carry all the time, you'll just fill it up with more stuff.
  - aadraple 11y ago
    We both agree that the decision makers have to increase funding public defenders and that their numbers should not be reduced with the uptake of technology. This dilution would simply bring us back to square one. It’s about augmenting with technology not replacing. If done correctly we wouldn’t run into the bigger backpack scenario as the underlying reason for bringing in technology to help fix the justice system would mean ideas have changed and they would know what is essential to carry – to use your analogy.
a3n 11y ago
> Our office represents 85 percent of the people charged with crimes in Orleans Parish but has an annual budget about a third the size of the district attorney’s. Clearly the state has weighted things for maximum convictions. Shouldn't public defenders have exactly the same budget as prosecutors? EDIT: I meant budget per case.
studentrob 11y ago
It is infuriating to hear that those who have stood up for the poor feel they are not able to do their best. I hope some improvements can be made as a result of this excellent article!
chrismcb 11y ago
"At that point, he realized that the client had never been served to appear for the court date on which he allegedly jumped bail." Why is it the public defender had to notice that? Why didn't someone else notice, why was he even arrested in the first place? There are more problems with the system...

233 points by ikeboy 11y ago

That public defenders have scarce resources to do their job is about as surprising as the fact that people living in poverty don't invest in the stock market. > My clients, like the millions of other people in the United States who are currently represented by public defenders, deserve better. The poor are massively underserved, disenfranchised, disrespected, demoralized and more in this country -- no doubt about it. Unfortunately, the unfair justice system is step 1000 in a chain of events with powerful institutional momentum. We cannot even begin to address this without addressing economic disparity first.

scottkduncan 11y ago
I agree this issue is part of the larger trend you're talking about, but we absolutely can start to address the imbalance of resource allocation in the criminal justice system without solving the underlying economic disparities, which are a generational challenge. With growing awareness of inequalities throughout this system, articles like this highlight some simple changes we could make to make the system a bit less unfair. In this case, it's simply a few more lawyers and investigators.
- jordanpg 11y ago
  No. The analogy I made was very appropriate. Shoring up the system with lawyers and investigators doesn't change the fact that those who can't afford professional representation are getting second-tier justice. Period. Similarly, raising the minimum wage (for example) will never change the fact that there are vast, lucrative swathes of the economy that are and always will be unavailable to those without lots of spare capital. Period.
  - scottkduncan 11y ago
    Admittedly based on anecdotes, the public defenders I have met are highly-educated, committed, creative professionals who typically choose this profession because they see the same structural forces but believe they can make a difference at the individual level. These are not second-tier individuals. If we give them the tools, resources, and support they need to actually do their job then there is no doubt in mind this would be a positive, albeit small, step in the right direction.
    - jordanpg 11y ago
      I'm sure most public defenders are marvelous public servants. But are you arguing that those who are forced to use the PD because they can't afford a lawyer are getting the same deal as someone hiring a professional defense team? That seems to be self-evidently false to me.
      - adebtlawyer 11y ago
        > I'm sure most public defenders are marvelous public servants. Why? The horrible pay and insane workloads don't attract bright people.
  - mapt 11y ago
    They're not getting second-tier justice. Second-tier justice would be fine by them. They're getting seventh-tier justice. Caseloads that average a single attorney-hour. 98% plea rates. Victimless crimes. Police departments known to fabricate evidence and permitted to persecute, detain, & search with no cause. Years between arrest and trial. Prohibitive bail money. Confiscation of what savings they have to pay a lawyer, on grounds that it's connected to a crime. Tracking of all their communications. A tolerated culture of prison violence. "Stop resisting". Asset forfeiture. Sentence lengths that shock the world. We don't need to fix all economic inequality to fix these things, because there are other times in our history and other places in the world that have drastically less of these problems, without fixing economic inequality. The drug war didn't just throw 1% of our population in prison, to satisfy those needs it completely hollowed out due process; You need to have a wealthy family behind you at this point to experience due process as envisioned by the reformers that established it; If you live in the wrong neighborhood and have the wrong color skin no amount of money will pay for it.
grossvogel 11y ago
The criminal justice system is one of the biggest institutional forces perpetuating that economic disparity. http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/04/08/3643497/california-courts-are-just-as-messed-up-as-fergusons/ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/04/08/3643497/californ... https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-challenges-debtors-prisons-across-michigan https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-challenges-debtors-prisons-ac...
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
It is possible to work on several problems at once. If we're not allowed to even begin improving public defenders until we have completely solved poverty, the poor are going to be waiting for justice for a long, long time.

jakobdabo 11y ago

He is doing a good job representing his client. His client is the one who pays him, the State, lobbied by the for-profit prisons.

skybrian 11y ago
She, actually,
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
dannyr 11y ago
The author's name is Tina Peng. She.
kndyry 11y ago
Ms. Peng's client is most certainly not the State. As a public defense attorney, her clients truly are the accused unable to retain private legal services - the indigent. As Ms. Peng argues, the service provided by public defenders is a constitutional right, not to mention one of the fundamental elements in a system designed to provide for adequate and universal representation. That the State issues her salary is a direct result of the constitutionality of the services public defense offices provide, and is the mandated prerogative of the State in due compliance with the Constitution. Ms. Peng has granted us an insider view of what is becoming an increasingly slippery slope. We cannot eschew the rightful defense of any group, no matter how "marginalized," and presume in the same breath that those criteria will never broaden or change. Nor can we expect legal disenfranchisement, and an inevitable increase in unjust incarceration, to resolve anything.
- jakobdabo 11y ago
  I'm trying to outline the problem that the State is not interested in funding those public defense offices. They are doing the absolute minimum required by the Constitution. In contrast, look how well-funded and heavily-equipped are the police and other law enforcement agencies.

janesvilleseo 11y ago

Slightly OT: I wonder what will happen when marijuna becomes legal across the nation and body cameras are more widely used? Will there be a reduction in overall prison population, will people get better representation due to video evidence, will there be less bad apple cops? All of these may become true to varying degrees. It will be interesting to see how we as a society handle these issues in the future.

newjersey 11y ago
I remember an incident where a police car hit the car in front of it in slow speed. Other police officers arrived on the scene and basically told the officer to stay quiet and tried to pin the incident on the woman driving the car ahead. All of this was recorded by the police dashboard camera. Now, you'd think I am trying to say that dashboard cameras are great and the problem is solved when police officers have to carry body cameras. Well, no. It is not even half the battle. Even if we get a system where we trust a police officer's words the same as that of an accused, the defendant still needs to have legal support that will work hard to get the footage and more importantly a police force that is willing to work with defendants in giving them the evidence the defense needs to undermine the prosecution's case. The main problem is the blue code of silence where police officers fear speaking out against other police officers for fear of retaliation. I am afraid this is a systemic problem with no easy solution. Who watches the watchers? Edit: Here is some more details on the case. From NBC Miami http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Cops-Set-Up-Woman-After-Crash.html http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Cops-Set-Up-Woman-After-C... > The disturbing video shows Alexandra Torrensvilas, 23, handcuffed in the back of the squad car as the officers get their stories straight on what they are going to say happened. > Officer Joel Francisco, 36, an 11-year veteran, crashed into the back of Torrensvilas' vehicle at a light on February 17 at midnight. The cop radioed to other officers who converged on the scene and hatched a way to bail Francisco out. > Officer Dewey Pressley, 42, arrives and questions Torrensvilas, who tells him that she has been drinking. The 21-year veteran officer seizes the opportunity and arrests her for DUI. But the plot thickens from there. > The cops begin to brainstorm believable excuses for the accident. From http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/crime-law/two-fired-hollywood-cops-jailed-charged-with-fal-1/nL7Td/ http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/crime-law/two-fired-h... > Pressley, a Hollywood police officer for 22 years, and Francisco were fired in January. So were three other Police Department employees who were at the crash scene: Sgt. Andrew Diaz, Community Service Officer Karim Thomas and crime scene technician Andrea Tomassi, none of whom have been charged in the case. From http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-04-09/news/fl-disney-cop-guilty-plea-20120409_1_alexandra-torrens-vilas-dewey-pressley-plea-deal http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-04-09/news/fl-disney-c... > Neither Pressley nor Francisco mentioned in their written incident reports that Francisco was on his cellphone at the time of the crash. Both mentioned the cat. > Pressley was acquitted of official misconduct, a felony, but convicted of falsifying records. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail and is free pending appeal. > Francisco's deal matches the jury decision and the sentence in the Pressley case. Had he been convicted of all charges at trial, Francisco would have faced nearly 30 years in prison. It seems like Lawyer larence Meltzer represented the accused in this case of State v. Alexandra Torrens-Vilas according to http://www.avvo.com/attorneys/33316-fl-lawrence-meltzer-1293731.html http://www.avvo.com/attorneys/33316-fl-lawrence-meltzer-1293... . Do you imagine the state would volunteer this dash cam tape if it had fallen on a overworked public defendant?

axxl 11y ago

> I’ve been asked by my family members, my friends and my hairdresser why I represent criminals. That's the most sad part of this article to me. Many people have lost innocent-until-proven-guilty in their minds. Tina has a good response in the article: > The answer is that I, and other public defenders, don’t represent criminals. We represent poor people who are facing criminal charges — charges on which they are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court. We represent members of our communities who have a right to real and meaningful legal representation, even if they are poor.

sanderjd 11y ago
Coming from a family of lawyers, I first realized that the belief in everyone's right to representation is not universal when many people I knew reacted vitriolically to lawyers representing inmates at Guantanamo. I really like the answer you quoted from the article, but it still relies on appealing to sympathy for the people being represented. But even those who deserve no sympathy deserve representation!
- fsloth 11y ago
  "many people I knew reacted vitriolically to lawyers representing inmates at Guantanamo" This attitude that "criminals deserve no justice" that is pervasive nearly everywhere amazes me. I cannot understand why people really think any system is so foolproof as to charge only those guilty.
  - asuffield 11y ago
    > I cannot understand why people really think any system is so foolproof as to charge only those guilty. A cynical observer might make a connection between the people who think that and the inability of the system to charge only those guilty.
  - throwawayaway 11y ago
    It's relatively easy to get people on your side of that debate. Tell them about how often people who have been convicted to face the death penalty are later exonerated.

Zigurd 11y ago

If you want a shock, get on a jury. If you are lucky, one other jury member might require more proof than a cop's say-so.

jonathanjaeger 11y ago
I was on a criminal jury trial in Manhattan in May. The guy was being charged with multiple assault and resisting arrest charges against cops. The incident happened a couple years ago. It was basically the cops' word vs. the defendant. You could tell both sides were not telling the whole truth. It's a much longer story, but in the end we found him not guilty for all those charges. Luckily I had a rational, sane jury that no matter what you think it was clear there wasn't proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if you don't have that kind of jury..
ricree 11y ago
The last (and so far only) time I was called for jury duty, the judge's instructions were very explicit that the word of a police officer was to be given no special weight compared to other witnesses. Jurors were questioned about this during the voir dire, and several people were dismissed because of an admitted bias in favor of police testimony. Obviously, this is a sample size of one and no generalizations can be drawn, but it does stand as a counterexample.
- graycat 11y ago
  Gee, I'd never make it past voir dire! I'd give the word of a police officer "special weight" -- assume he was bitterly, hatefully, fraudulently lying through his teeth, even if just for the fun of it.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  Last time I served on a jury, the judge gave the same instruction regarding police as witnesses. Nevertheless, the defendant had a heavy accent, and did not testify in her defense. The prosecution presented their entire case through the testimony of one policeman, who was shown to be wildly exaggerating to the point of an outright lie in a key element of his testimony. He never recanted or even corrected his testimony. Yet the first vote was massively in favor of convicting. Scary!

rectang 11y ago

But if we didn't convict the innocent, public prosecutors couldn't exhort the public into voting them back into office on the basis of an absurdly high conviction rate!

fsloth 11y ago
Why is a conviction rate a key performance indicator? I thought the western justice system existed mainly to inhibit crime, and if conviction rates are high, the system is not doing a very good job at inhibiting it.
- malka 11y ago
  > I thought the western justice system existed mainly to inhibit crime Personally I think the western justice system is more about pusishing crimimals than inhibiting crime.
  - tete 11y ago
    I think malka meant both officially and "how it should be".
  - fsloth 11y ago
    I live in a western country (Finland) where crime inhibition seems still to be the main purpose of the justice system - although there is constant discussion about "getting tougher on crime".

nickalewis 11y ago

Kind of Off-Topic, but I emailed Tina immediately upon reading this last week. It really moved me. I'd like to chat with any lawyers working as Public Defenders, pro bono or otherwise, to get a better idea of the day to day challenges they have with managing case load and communicating with clients. Things technoloy could help with. Does anyone know a good place/community/group to join? I ask because myself, friends, and close family have all had experience with a Public defenders office at some point, the article is spot on about many clients being poor, assumed guilty, and lacking resources. I'm currently helping families navigate the criminal justice system with a company I started , but it's been on my head (and heart) to begin looking at providing resources to PD offices as well, as it's so important that these cases, particular low-level and drug offenses, are handled efficiently. I would love to get a better idea of the day-to-day challenges faced by an active public defender. Also if anyone is interested in a amazing documentary about the courage and dedication PD's have check out Gideon's Army: http://m.imdb.com/title/tt2179053/ http://m.imdb.com/title/tt2179053/. I think it's on Netflix.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago
> Kind of Off-Topic, but I emailed Tina immediately upon reading this last week. It really moved me. I'd like to chat with any lawyers working as Public Defenders, pro bono or otherwise, to get a better idea of the day to day challenges they have with managing case load and communicating with clients. Things technoloy could help with. Does anyone know a good place/community/group to join? I mentioned this to a public defender I know, and he'd be interested in dropping you a line if you can give me a contact address. (HN still doesn't seem to have direct messaging...)
- nickalewis 11y ago
  Absolutely: nick@penmateapp.com. Please have him drop me a line!
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    I've passed it on. FYI, you have a typo on your front page: "Mail letters d photos right from your phone." Looks like a cool service, hope it works out!

deckar01 11y ago

> When people ask how to push back against police misconduct, how to decrease the costs of mass incarceration and how to ensure fairer treatment of our nation’s most disenfranchised citizens, part of the answer lies in fully funding public defender’s offices and enabling us to represent our clients in a meaningful manner. If the justice system is a funnel, these public defenders are at the very bottom. Adequate funding may relieve pressure, but the long term solution is a better filter at the very top. One solution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9802861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9802861

adanto6840 11y ago

Why isn't it legally mandated that the budgets for the District Attorney's office must be less than or equal to the budget for the Public Defender's? I'm sure there are valid reasons and what I'm suggesting may be unrealistic, but it sure seems like it'd nearly guarantee that we're upholding the intent of the Constitution if we did that, eh?

chc 11y ago
That is pretty much guaranteed to produce a poor allocation of funds. Every case requiring public defender resources will also require district attorney resources, but not every case requiring district attorney resources will require anything from a public defender, because a lot of people have their own lawyers.
- adanto6840 11y ago
  Yeah, I realized that right after I posted. Seems easy enough to account for though, no? If 70% (or whatever XX% is) of cases are handled by a Public Defender, then you'd simply require that their funding is, at a minimum, 70% of the DA's funding...
- nradov 11y ago
  Also the district attorney has to deal with a lot of cases where they decide to just drop charges. That takes resources as well.
- segmondy 11y ago
  I think the defenders should have more. Usually when the DA decides to prosecute, they already have "evidence" Most of their work is done, all they have to do is present said evidence and in most cases win. The defenders tho have to work really hard to counter all and any evidence. e.g get a ticket from the police? that's evidence that you were speeding. you are paying the fine unless you put in effort to prove you were not. e.g. get arrested for drugs, guns. those will be seized, the DA will look at the evidence and prosecute. your lawyer, will have to do work to show that those are not yours, or that you were legally able to possess those, or some other way. it seems the public defenders do more work and should have the same amount of budget, if not more.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

A close friend of mine is a public defender, and gave me some disturbing stats. According to the American Bar Association, it is unethical for a defense lawyer to take more than 400 cases a year; 350 if dealing with juvenile cases; three if they're capital (death-penalty) cases. Every PD my friend knows regularly goes double those limits, because they have no choice and the states aren't interested in upholding the ABA's limits.

aadraple 11y ago

The justice system is deeply flawed but technology can help repair it. Let me explain. Legal work can be split up into two buckets – process based work and advisory work. The advisory work revolves around analysis, comparison and collaboration – distinctly human (for now) tasks. The bulk of legal work however is process based, which is repetitive, routine, administrative and could actually be done through the use of machine learning and AI. Examples of process-based work are document review and legal research. Document review is when parties to a case sort through and analyze the documents in their possession to determine if they are relevant to the case at hand. Legal research is the process of identifying and retrieving the necessary information lawyers need to support legal decision-making. If LegalTech was to do the lions share of a public defender's process based legal work, they would be able to focus their advisory work. This would allow a public defender to not only to defend more individuals but most importantly, to provide proper legal help to everyone they are defending. The inequalities and problems in the justice system could be seriously helped/fixed with better adoption and implementation of technology. The problem is that tech must be embraced not just by individual lawyers and defenders who it would help the most, but also by the decision makers themselves, government agencies/law firms, who have the final say on whether to bring tech into their organizations. The good news is that there are strides being made towards bringing in tech to augment lawyers capabilities with technology, the bad news is that no speed is fast enough as there are a ton of people who require proper legal representation right now that are missing out.

kevinchen 11y ago
I don't think technology will help things. Until we change our collective opinions about funding public defenders, better legal software will just cause public defenders' budget/headcounts to be reduced so that they are still taking on the same amount of work. It's like buying a bigger backpack/purse -- until you change your ideas about what is essential to carry all the time, you'll just fill it up with more stuff.
- aadraple 11y ago
  We both agree that the decision makers have to increase funding public defenders and that their numbers should not be reduced with the uptake of technology. This dilution would simply bring us back to square one. It’s about augmenting with technology not replacing. If done correctly we wouldn’t run into the bigger backpack scenario as the underlying reason for bringing in technology to help fix the justice system would mean ideas have changed and they would know what is essential to carry – to use your analogy.

a3n 11y ago

> Our office represents 85 percent of the people charged with crimes in Orleans Parish but has an annual budget about a third the size of the district attorney’s. Clearly the state has weighted things for maximum convictions. Shouldn't public defenders have exactly the same budget as prosecutors? EDIT: I meant budget per case.

studentrob 11y ago

It is infuriating to hear that those who have stood up for the poor feel they are not able to do their best. I hope some improvements can be made as a result of this excellent article!

chrismcb 11y ago

"At that point, he realized that the client had never been served to appear for the court date on which he allegedly jumped bail." Why is it the public defender had to notice that? Why didn't someone else notice, why was he even arrested in the first place? There are more problems with the system...