Competent Counsel

07/25/2012

One Giant Step for Michigan: Indigent Defense Reform is Around the Corner

By Tanya Greene, Advocacy and Policy Counsel, ACLU at 3:22pm

During the many years I practiced as a criminal defense attorney, I filed more pleadings requesting additional resources to investigate facts, more funding to support research into mitigating factors in my clients’ cases, and more time to properly prepare my case than I ever thought I would, or should have to. Unfortunately, the criminal justice systems in which I practiced did not provide sufficient resources for an attorney to be effective in her work representing the poor. Sadly, many systems across the nation face this same challenge.

09/04/2012

Access to Counsel

Hitting Two Birds with One Stone: Strategies for Addressing the Indigent Defense Crisis and Overincarceration

By Vanita Gupta, Center for Justice & Steve Hanlon, Partner, Holland & Knight at 1:07pm

Earlier this year, the Orleans Parish Defenders Office (OPD), which represents more than 80 percent of criminal defendants in Orleans Parish and handled 30,000 cases in 2011, faced a particularly severe fiscal crisis.

08/31/2012

Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration

Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration: Weekly Highlights

By Alex Stamm, ACLU Center for Justice at 2:05pm

Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history.

12/11/2012

New York

Project Liberty Takes on Indigent Defense

By Lauren Alexander, ACLU of New York at 11:19am

Project Liberty, the New York Civil Liberties Union very own television show, is back and broadcasting across New York State. Our fourth episode highlights the NYCLU’s relentless fight to guarantee that New York’s criminal justice system respects the rights of all New Yorker’s, not just those who can afford their own Johnny Cochran.

This episode marks five years since we filed Hurrell-Haring v. State of New York – our landmark, class-action lawsuit challenging New York’s failed system for providing effective legal counsel to poor people accused of crimes.

American Civil Liberties Union