On Wednesday October 5th New England's National Lawyers Guild and American Constitution Society will be holding a speaker event about what is required of states under the Sixth and Fourteenth amendments in regard to indigent defense services and how states avoid their constitutional responsibilities. The featured speaker is David Carroll, Director of Research for the National Legal Aid & Defender Association The event will take place at 5:30 p.m. in room 506 and food will be served from Boston Kitchen Pizza.
Some background information on this event:
In Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), the United States Supreme Court deemed the right to attorney for those unable to afford one “fundamental and essential” to fair trials. Nearly 50 years later, public defense services in America are plagued by deep-rooted, chronic problems that our nation’s top law enforcement official, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, has called “morally untenable” and “economically unsustainable.” The American Bar Association (ABA) defines the ability of states to guarantee a poor defendant constitutionally-adequate legal representation as being in a perpetual “state of crisis.” And, since upwards of 85% of all people charged with state crimes with potential jail time qualify for a public lawyer, state and local governments daily jeopardize the ability of our courts to produce verdicts that are fair, correct, swift and final.