Abstract
In 1963, Gideon v. Wainwright dramatically changed the landscape of criminal justice with its mandate that poor criminal defendants be entitled to legal representation funded by the government. As scholars and practitioners have noted repeatedly over more than fifty years, states have generally failed to provide the equal access Gideon promised. This Article revisits the questions raised by the authors over a decade ago when they asserted that a genuine national crisis exists regarding the right to counsel in criminal cases for poor people. Sadly, despite a few isolated instances where litigation has sparked some progress, the issues remain the same: persistent underfunding and crushing caseloads, and little support from the Supreme Court to remedy ineffective assistance claims. The authors conclude that our patchwork system of public defense for the poor remains disturbingly dysfunctional.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-2018
Publication Information
86 George Washington Law Review 1564-1603 (2018)
Repository Citation
Backus, Mary Sue and Marcus, Paul, "The Right to Counsel in Criminal Cases: Still a National Crisis?" (2018). Faculty Publications. 1897.
https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/facpubs/1897