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public defender
(redirected from Public defenders)

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Legal, Wikipedia 0.04 sec.
public defender, governmental official who represents indigent persons accused of crime. U.S. Supreme Court decisions expanding the right to counsel to pretrial proceedings and holding that a person cannot be sentenced to even one day in jail unless a lawyer was provided have created a need for more lawyers to represent the indigent. Proponents of the public defender office claim that it is the most efficient and effective method of protecting the indigent. Other systems include court-appointed counsel from the local bar, clinics operated by law schools, and legal aid societies. The societies are privately funded and offer civil and criminal representation.

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The center has a children's waiting area, office space for the county counsel, a children's law center and offices for those who work on juvenile cases: prosecutors, public defenders, alternate public defenders, court-appointed special advocates and personnel from the Department of Children and Family Services and Probation Department.
Efforts to form a combined union of Los Angeles prosecutors and public defenders may have foundered because a key prosecutor wants to include deputy sheriffs.
routinely assign Mexican defendants public defenders who "speak little or no Spanish and have no experience in death penalty cases.
 
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