In the face of a criminal prosecution system plagued by injustice, there are three actors in a criminal court who could reasonably strike in order to assure justice for the accused: Defense attorneys, defendants, and the jury. (For the purposes of this thought exercise, we can realistically exclude judges, court officers, probation officers, and prosecutors.) Juries can act through jury nullification. Defendants can engage in a plea strike, forcing individual cases to trial. But public defenders, employed and compensated for their time in the courtroom, shut the courts down when they go out on the line. This post explores the stresses on public defenders, their ethical obligations to their clients and profession, the rights of defendants who require counsel, recent organizing efforts, and the interests of society as a whole.
Despite performing a crucial job whose duties are mandated by the U.S. Constitution — representing poor people who cannot afford a criminal lawyer — public defenders face overwhelming caseloads, difficult conditions causing turnover, staggering law school debt, and in many areas of the country, low pay and inadequate staffing. These conditions threaten the erosion of rights for criminal defendants, who are denied zealous representation.
This is exemplified through high caseloads. In Los Angeles, public defenders sounded the alarm in 2023 about caseloads as high as 500 per attorney at a mental health courthouse, saying attorneys felt pressured to...
In an extraordinary message to Norway’s prime minister, President Donald Trump linked his pursuit of the self-governing Danish territory of Greenland to his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize. H...