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Public defenders are paid for by the government.

• nix23 6y ago
  >Public defenders Those are normally Not the Superstars Defenders right? That's what we talk about here, if your rich you can afford the best Defender/Attorney-Team. Your wrote that: >A poor person that magically had the kind of lawyers Holmes uses would do just as well. Unequal access to legal resources is the root of the problem.
  • garmaine 6y ago
    Yes, and if we paid public defenders superstar salaries, that’s where the talent would be. I’m not saying this is a practical choice to make, though.
    • roywiggins 6y ago
      My understanding is that federal public defenders have a really good reputation. It's at the state level that they're given obscene workloads and laughable salaries. Forget superstar salaries, funding adequately-sized PD offices would be a massive improvement over the status quo. Ordinarily, it wouldn't cost that much to have a decent public defender system. Unfortunately, the entire system is built around people pleading to charges, and if every single defendant had high quality representation, the resulting flood of actual trials would paralyze the system.
      • garmaine 6y ago
        True. Though I would say an underlying issue here is that too much stuff is criminalized. Case counts shouldn’t be that high to begin with.