Poor And the Justice System
In 1963, the Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that every criminal defendant has a right to have an attorney. The poor are appointed an attorney normally known as a public defender to defend them. The poor are given substandard representation in courts due to lack of funds and a broken criminal justice system. The criminal justice system has made strides forward. "The Sixth Amendment right to counsel was generally understood as guaranteeing criminal defendants the right to hire their own counsel if they could afford to do so. The Supreme Court has since ruled, however, that in both federal cases (Johnson vs. Zerbst 1938) and state cases (Gideon vs. Wainwright, 1963), the government must provide counsel to represent criminal defendants who cannot afford to hire counsel on their own, and that the right to counsel is guaranteed regardless of how short the defendant's term of imprisonment may be if convicted (Argersinger vs. Hamlin, 1972)". Warren Burger, The Washington Times, December 22, 1991. The Supreme Court acknowledges that the constitutionally required counsel must provide effective assistance, court decisions have provided only halfhearted enforcement of the requirement of effectivene
ss. The counsel is presumed to be effective once a member of the bar. The court has held that neither gross inexperience nor unfamiliarity with criminal practice is enough to support a finding of ineffectiveness. The courts refuse to mandate even the most elementary steps in effective case preparation, such as interviewing the client or witnesses. Instead, the courts judge ineffectiveness under the totality of the circumstances in each case. In one case, Judge Henry Friendly, writing for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, held that a lawyer was not ineffective even though he had slept through a portion of a witness's cross-examination. Judge Friendly simply speculated that the witness's testimony probably was not very important because "if it had been, (the trial judge) would have awakened him." Chief Justice Warren Burger, from the opposite end of the political spectrum, has been similarly critical of performance by defense attorneys. Incompetence is overlooked because to do otherwise would bring the criminal justice system to a standstill. There are some jurisdictions that require all attorneys that belong to the bar to serve pro bono publico. This is to donate time for the poor. The courts have recognized the connection between economics and the incentives for vigorous defense. Chief Justice Joseph Weintraub once wrote for the New Jersey Supreme Court, "A lawyer needs no motivation beyond his sense of duty and his pride
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Approximate Word count = 974
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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