man the public defender discourse pisses me off so bad. yeah. yeah I do think that every single person deserves representation. yeah that includes people who *have* committed rape and murder and abuse. when I say every single person I mean every single person. if your idea of justice excludes one person it excludes everyone. next question
“so you’re saying you’d represent someone who has admitted to sexual assault?” i’m saying I have.
“so you’re saying you’d represent someone who has admitted to domestic violence?” i’m saying i have.
"so you’re saying you’d represent someone who has admitted to child abuse?" i'm saying i have.
and i am saying i have given each and every one of those clients the same level of professionalism, effort, and zealous advocacy i have given my clients who are victims of the same. that is how due process works, and every person is guaranteed it.
i have nothing but respect and admiration for my colleagues in the public interest sector who represent those who have committed and/or been accused any and all crimes, no matter how "morally reprehensible" others may find them.
public defenders are among the best, brightest, and most selfless attorneys out there. they are on the front lines of combating the carceral state and protecting the rights of every day people. get it straight in your heads. thanks.
Being a public defender is one of the most essential and under-recognized jobs someone can do to help maintain our democracy. Fuck absolutely anyone and everyone who goes after them. If you’re against public defenders you are fighting for fascism. There’s nothing more to say on the matter.
Pretty much anytime people are trying to smear an ex-lawyer politician by saying "they represented murderers/pedophiles/whatever," what they really mean is "they were a public defender and made sure the system treated everyone fairly, which is the only way a judicial system can ever actually dispense justice." Sounds like someone we need more of in government.
Depriving the guilty of the best representation they can have is depriving the innocent of that, too, because THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF THE TRIAL and we're not assuming people are guilty. Even people who confessed, no, because sometimes people give false confessions.
Ir doesn't matter, the justice system is adversarial and we shouldn't presume guilt.
You could be falsely accused of a terrible crime. Would you not want robust legal representation? Even if you didn’t have the means to pay for a lawyer yourself?
Once more, courts don’t stop at the district level. There’s the two levels of appellate courts above them. And the federal Supreme Court if it ends up being a constitutional issue. Cases don’t always end at the guilty verdict.
The most common appeal is “ineffective assistance of counsel” (IAOC). IAOC is when your attorney did such a bad job defending you that your trial was constitutionally unfair. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984).
If a defendant wins an IAOC appeal, they get a new trial.
Usually, though, they still have to prove that they might have been found not-guilty if their attorney hadn’t screwed up (in legal speak, we say the attorney created prejudice against their own client). However, if the attorney screws up badly enough, it doesn’t matter how obvious the guilt is, they still get a new trial.
And now you’ve got an even longer time since the original crime and witnesses who might not want to testify again or are unavailable for other reasons or are dead. It is harder to prove guilt at a second trial because of that and the new defense attorney now knows all the weaknesses of the state’s case and can exploit them.
Do you know what prevents successful IAOC claims? Good public defenders.
On what I think this argument chain is referring to: There's being a public defender in the sense of making sure that people are getting a fair trial and treated as innocent beyond a shadow of a doubt to ensure that they're treated fairly and not falsely punished, and then there's the actual scum that actually try pulling shit like "My client's not at fault for doing such vile things, because this 5-year old seduced him."
I'm sure I don't need to name names.
