4 ms·

I guess my impression was that you can not go to far down that road starting with only $60,000 in the bank unless you have a good lawyer take you on for free wh

• rayiner 14y ago
  That much money would hire a competent criminal defense solo-practitioner for enough hours to work through many or most of those options. And for those who can't afford it, at the federal level public defenders are similarly credentialed as prosecutors and are by law paid the same (for obvious reasons). And there is always pro se representation with the help of legal aid clinics and prison law libraries. Prisoners with no money file huge numbers of appeals and petitions every year using these resources. Now, Aaron Swartz did blow through a ton of money defending himself. But he also hired an entire team from one of the top white collar firms in the country. Moreover, his case was complex. He couldn't very well argue "the DNA says someone else did it!" He was a political activist engaging in civil disobedience. He was stuck arguing that while he did what the prosecution claims he did, what he did shouldn't be a crime. You can't really extrapolate from his case to argue that it's impossible to take advantage of the various procedural protections because of the expense of doing so.