public defender

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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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Public defenders are in a unique position to put pressure on legislators.

Lessons from New Orleans: a stronger role for public defenders in spurring indigent defense reform

My realization forced me to understand how the public defender experience forever changes the professional personas and personal values of students and new attorneys.

The power of the public defender experience: learning by fighting for the incarcerated and poor

(State attorney and public defender elections for the First through the 19th circuits are held in presidential election years; elections for those offices in the 20th Circuit are held during non-presidential general election years.)

Candidates square off in state attorney, PD races

Empirical studies find that defendants represented by public defenders are not more likely to be convicted than those who retain private counsel.

The trials of indigent defense: type of counsel and case outcomes in felony jury trials

Most of those entities won dismissals, so the only remaining defendants now belong to the Public Defender System.

State scrambles to rejoin public-defender caseload suit

Federal Public Defender for the district of Arizona

Sarah S. Gannett

Mehn discloses that the Government of Liberia officially assigned only two Public Defenders to Nimba, but people are impersonating as lawyers under the group, paralegal.

Fake lawyers roam Nimba

Those Assistant Public Defenders also were required to work one 12-hour on-call shift (8 a.m.

Public Defender caseloads remain high

Outside teaching, LaVigne is a member of the National Criminal Defense College and the Wisconsin Public Defender Trial Skills Academy and has regularly taken part in the Ask a Lawyer prison program, started by a university alumnus.

LaVigne sharpens faculties' at UW Law School

Public defenders 35 percent of whom are part-timers are the most frequent users of Minnesota's court system.

Technology inundates public defenders

Advocates also say that better public defenders could speed cases toward a conclusion, meaning unrepresented people who can't pay bail wouldn't sit in jail for months or even years.

Lawmakers must decide on public defense overhaul

Natalia Oakes, a lawyer running as a Democrat against Devlin in Tuesday's election and who earned about $140,000 from 118 juvenile case appointments and 39 family court appointments last year in Harris County, called the county's public defenders "hard-working" lawyers.

Harris County juvenile judges and private attorneys accused of cronyism: "Everybody wins but the kids"