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232 Results
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California’s lack of oversight adds to Santa Cruz County’s indigent defense woes
Pleading the Sixth: For decades, Santa Cruz County has delegated to private law firms, through county contracts, all decision-making about the provision of Sixth Amendment right to counsel services. The county cannot accurately say how many people or cases, and of what case types, require appointed counsel nor by whom the…
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6AC’s David Carroll appears on the OpenMike podcast
In a conversation ranging from national issues on right to counsel reforms, to Michigan’s continuing progress toward constitutional compliance, to the experiences of Wayne County (Detroit) establishing a new public defender system in response to a 6AC study finding significant systemic deficiencies, 6AC executive director David Carroll was a…
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2019 Year in Review
Season’s Greetings from the 6AC! We at 6AC are privileged to travel all across the country to meet with criminal justice stakeholders and policymakers as we aim to help them ensure an effective right to counsel. This year brought us as far north as Anchorage, AK, as far west as…
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Why the State of Texas is responsible for denying counsel to indigent people in Amarillo
Pleading the Sixth: More than 74% of all misdemeanor defendants in Potter County, Texas (Amarillo) face the possibility of jail time without the aid of a lawyer, due to sheriff’s deputies, county prosecutors, and trial court judges exerting direct, overt pressure on indigent defendants to forego exercising their constitutional right…
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New report finds State of Michigan must take responsibility for deficient felony assigned counsel services in Wayne County (Detroit)
Pleading the Sixth: Forcing trial court judges to design and directly oversee the system that provides attorneys to represent indigent defendants always opens the door to the dangers of undue judicial interference with the right to counsel. This is the case in Wayne County (Detroit), Michigan, as explained in a new…
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Nevada creates and empowers a statewide indigent defense commission
Pleading the Sixth: After decades of public defense studies, legislative and supreme court right to counsel commissions, and numerous attempts at statutory indigent defense reform, the Nevada legislature has created a state commission to promulgate and enforce uniform standards statewide for providing indigent defense representation. Although the bill was stripped…
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A lack of effectiveness and financial oversight define Maine’s right to counsel system
Pleading the Sixth: Maine is the only state in the country that provides all indigent defense services through private attorneys. There are two principal reasons that other states have moved away from using solely private attorneys. First, it is difficult to predict and contain costs in a private attorney system. Second,…
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Assembly line pretrial representation in Delaware results in denial of right to counsel
In a decision that sounds a warning bell for public defense systems throughout the country, the Delaware Supreme Court has held that “[t]he Sixth Amendment requires more than the physical presence of counsel the first day of trial in a serious felony case with the possibility of a lengthy minimum mandatory…
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Oregon’s complex bureaucracy obscures just another fixed fee system
Pleading the Sixth: Oregon stands as a cautionary tale regarding indigent defense reform. Often extolled (including by this author) as a working model that provides effective public defense services through a statewide system of contracts, a new comprehensive evaluation by the 6AC reveals instead that Oregon constructed a complex bureaucracy…
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Indiana Task Force on Public Defense urges comprehensive reform
Pleading the Sixth: In October 2016, the 6AC released its evaluation of trial level right to counsel services in Indiana, detailing how and why the Indiana public defense system results in the actual and constructive denial of counsel to the indigent accused in courts all across the state. In 2017, an…
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Report released evaluating the right to counsel in rural Nevada
Pleading the Sixth: Remote population centers across great geographic expanses, a paucity of attorneys, limited social services, almost no public transportation, restricted tax bases, and non-lawyer judges in misdemeanor courts, are just some of the problems states often face while trying to provide effective public defense services in rural America.
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Criminal justice issues that disproportionately harm poor people, such as wrongful convictions and over-incarceration, cannot be fixed if indigent defendants are given attorneys who do not have the time, resources, or qualifications, to be a constitutional check on government. Yet, investment in improving indigent defense services remains largely neglected. The Sixth Amendment Center is the only nonprofit organization in the country that exclusively examines, uncovers, and helps fix the root of the indigent defense crisis in which inequality is perpetuated because poor defendants do not get a fair fight.
The Sixth Amendment Center is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization under EIN: 45-3477185.
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