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Major report from The Constitution Project on right to counsel

By Douglas A. Berman

Last week, the folks at The Constitution Project released a massive report on the state of indigent defense titled "Justice Denied: America's Continuing Neglect of Our Constitutional Right to Counsel." The work is available here, and it is an impressive and important contribution.  This page describes the report's background: The National Right to Counsel Committee was created in 2004 to examine the ability of the American justice system to provide adequate counsel to individuals in criminal and juvenile delinquency cases who cannot afford lawyers.  Decades after the United States Supreme Court ruling in Gideon v. Wainwright and other landmark Supreme Court decisions, which recognized the right to lawyers for those who cannot afford them, there was disturbing evidence that states and localities were not providing competent counsel, despite the constitutional requirement that they do so...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on April 19, 2009 (boomark / email).