It sounds to me like there was only one mis-step in this story. The mis-identification was resolved quite quickly once the accused had a competent private lawye

It sounds to me like there was only one mis-step in this story. The mis-identification was resolved quite quickly once the accused had a competent private lawyer. So it seems to me that this case is not an indictment of our legal system as a whole so much as it is an indictment of underfunded and/or incompetent public defenders. What if we tried funding the public defender's office with the same average amount of money per case handled as the prosecutor's office as? What effect would that have on both justice and people's perception of justice? And is this a simple enough test to be run with either public or private funds in a few sample municipalities as an experiment?