When America’s Founding Fathers were debating the Constitution, they realized that it didn’t do enough to protect individual rights, according to The Greenwood Commonwealth.
Thus, three years after its adoption, they added the
document’s first 10 amendments, collectively known as the Bill of Rights.
Amendment No. 6 concentrated on providing criminal defendants with a fair
judicial process, including the right to be assisted by an attorney.
In 1963, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court interpreted
the Sixth Amendment to dictate that this right to counsel applies to all felony
defendants in state courts, not just those wealthy enough to hire an attorney.
Thus, for more than six decades, any defendant too poor to afford an attorney
has been guaranteed that one would be provided at the government’s expense.
As a comprehensive
story from The Greenwood Commonwealth this past weekend explains, it
is unclear how well Mississippi is living up to this constitutional obligation.
An analysis of the documents filed by the state’s 23 circuit court districts,
where felony criminal trials are held, exposed wide variations in how and when
the courts provide indigent defendants with an attorney. Only about a third of
the court districts have clear plans that closely follow the guidelines to
provide defendants with an attorney soon after their arrest to discuss the
charges, request a preliminary hearing and petition for release on bond while
awaiting trial.
The variations in the public defender system exist not
just from district to district but can also exist from county to county within
a court district. For example, in the 4th District, which covers three counties
in the Delta, Washington County operates with a full-time public defender’s
office, Sunflower County contracts with two private practice attorneys to
provide indigent counsel, and Leflore County appoints the public defenders from
a list of private practice attorneys willing to do the work.
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