Major report from The Constitution Project on right to counsel

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.

The Committee’s charge was to assess the extent of the problem, the various ways that states and localities provide legal representation to those who cannot hire their own lawyers, and to formulate recommendations about how to improve systems of indigent defense to ensure fairness for all Americans.  The result is Justice Denied: America’s Continuing Neglect of Our Constitutional Right to Counsel.

Justice Denied is not just for those who provide indigent defense services, although everyone in the business of providing such services will surely find it of interest.  Instead, the report should be required reading for legislators, executive branch officials, judges, researchers, bar leaders, and everyone else who possesses the power to remedy or influence the problems that this report vividly documents.  Justice Denied is the handbook that lights the way toward genuine and lasting improvement in the delivery of indigent defense services in America, thus enhancing the quality of justice for all. Its findings and recommendations must — at long last — be heeded.

This post at The BLT provides follow-up info:

[P]roject president Virginia Sloan is determined not to let the 213-page report, full of recommendations, gather dust on a shelf. “We went right from the press conference to David Ogden’s office,” she said, referring to the new deputy attorney general. “And we are talking to folks on the Hill and policymakers at the state level as well.”…

The federal government will need to play a key role in remedying the problem through increased grant funding, the report states. It even urges individual defenders to refuse new cases if their current workload leaves them unable to meet their professional obligations.

“We’ve already heard from people that this is the most comprehensive look at indigent defense in 30 years,” says Sloan. “And it wasn’t done by the defense community or the ABA. It is completely bipartisan.”

I am not optimistic that, at a time when states are pinching every penny, more money will be spent on defense systems.  But I sincerely hope that this report and the folks at The Constitution Project can succeed on this very important issue.