From Charity to Right

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 57-85
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
Due Process ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
Private Charity ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Constitutional Right

Using a case study of Massachusetts, this chapter traces a shift between the 1930s and the 1950s in how elite lawyers framed the problem of indigent defense—from a problem for private charity to a constitutional right requiring public support. By the 1930s, lawyers in several cities had established voluntary defender organizations as a private charitable alternative to the public defender. Meanwhile, a series of Supreme Court cases, interpreting the due process requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment, steadily expanded the constitutional right to counsel in criminal trials, culminating in the 1942 decision of Betts v. Brady. Voluntary defenders typically had volatile funding, and lawyers increasingly worried that these private organizations lacked adequate resources to fulfill the expanding constitutional mandate to provide counsel for indigent defendants. By the 1950s, many lawyers worried that private charity was inadequate to satisfy a constitutional right, and increasingly viewed the public defender as preferable to the voluntary defender.

Free Justice

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 24-56
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Public Prosecutor ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
The Public ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
Private Charity

This chapter describes Progressive Era debates within the legal profession over proposals to establish a “public defender” in the criminal courts—a public official who would represent criminal defendants and counterbalance the public prosecutor. It describes different versions of the public defender idea, as developed by California lawyer Clara Foltz, New York lawyer Mayer Goldman, and the prominent Massachusetts lawyer Reginald Heber Smith, author of Justice and the Poor. Leaders of the bar, often affiliated with corporate law firms, expressed concerns that the public defender represented a step towards socialization of the legal profession. Instead, they preferred to handle indigent defense and other forms of legal aid through private charity. In 1917, New York lawyers rejected proposals for a government-controlled public defender and instead established a criminal branch of the Legal Aid Society.

Introduction

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
Private Charity ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The 1960S

Today, thousands of public defenders around the United States represent indigent defendants in criminal proceedings. At a moment of widespread concern about mass incarceration and racial and class inequality, public defenders are seen both as participants in, and adversaries of, the carceral state. The introduction to this book provides an overview of how public defenders became so widespread in American courtrooms. At the turn of the twentieth century, many elite lawyers expressed skepticism about the public defender. They posited that the legal profession should remain independent from the state as much as possible, and that indigent defense was better handled by private charity. They established voluntary defender organizations. But by the 1960s, prevailing views had changed. Many elite lawyers now endorsed the public defender, especially after the Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Gideon v. Wainwright, which expanded the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The book argues that these developments can be explained by shifts in liberalism and how lawyers conceived of the profession’s place within liberal democracy.

Democratic Justice

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 86-116
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Defense Attorneys ◽  
The Public ◽  
Criminal Defense ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cold War

In contrast to earlier periods when elite lawyers expressed skepticism of the public defender, this chapter describes the Cold War moment when elite lawyers, like the New York lawyer Harrison Tweed, celebrated the public defender as central to the “American way of life.” By the 1950s, lawyers and political leaders touted the rights that U.S. Constitution afforded to criminal defendants as hallmarks of democracy. These rights were thought to exemplify democratic regard for the individual, in contrast to the state-dominated show trials that symbolized totalitarianism. Within this context, criminal defense attorneys were rhetorically celebrated and the public defender was reframed from a harbinger of socialism into an anticommunist figure. In 1963, the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, further enshrining the constitutional right to counsel. Gideon held that the Sixth Amendment requires states to provide counsel to indigent defendants in all serious felony trials. The decision was celebrated and chronicled in the widely read book by journalist Anthony Lewis, Gideon’s Trumpet, and the Ford Foundation announced ambitious plans for a nationwide initiative to expand public defender offices.

The Ground Observer Corps: Public Relations and the Cold War in the 1950s

2013 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenton Clymer
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Air Force ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Air Defense ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Homeland Defense

This essay examines the development and demise of one of the least studied elements of U.S. homeland defense efforts in the 1950s: the Ground Observer Corps (GOC). The article recounts the history of the GOC from its founding in the mid-1950s until its deactivation in 1959 and concludes that it never came close to achieving its goals for recruitment and effectiveness. Yet, despite the major shortcomings of the GOC, the U.S. Air Force continued to support it, primarily because it was seen as helpful for the public relations interests of the Air Force, continental air defense, and, more generally, U.S. Cold War policies. The lack of widespread public support for the GOC raises questions about the view that Americans were deeply fearful of an imminent Soviet nuclear strike in the 1950s.

A Permanent Crisis

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 117-150
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
Private Charity ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Trial Advocacy ◽  
Reform Organizations

This chapter traces the rocky implementation of Gideon v. Wainwright between 1963 and 1973, continuing the Massachusetts case study begun in chapter 2 and also addressing developments in Philadelphia and other localities. Although states could technically comply with Gideon in a variety of ways (e.g. appointing private counsel case-by-case),many lawyers and reform organizations interpreted Gideon as a broader mandate to establish and expand institutionalized public defender offices. The Ford Foundation and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA) embarked upon the National Defender Project, an ambitious nationwide effort. As a result of such efforts, the 1960s witnessed change and growth in public defender offices around the country. In Massachusetts, for example, the organization initially founded as a voluntary defender was converted from a private charity into a statewide public defender agency, hired dozens of new lawyers, and was soon handling tens of thousands of cases each year. Yet, criticisms quickly emerged that public defenders had overwhelming caseloads and resorted too often to plea bargaining, rather than trial advocacy. Reformers diagnosed a new problem, the “indigent defense crisis” that persists today.

Local Injustice

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 151-180
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
War On Crime ◽  
The Government

With snapshots of Massachusetts and Mississippi, among other examples, this chapter continues to trace how the implementation of Gideon v. Wainwright fell short of expectations in local communities. In particular, it examines some of the efforts funded by the National Defender Project, an initiative of the Ford Foundation and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA). This initiative funded the establishment and expansion of public defender offices around the country. Yet many challenges remained. Criminal defendants themselves complained that public defenders did not sufficiently understand their circumstances—spurring new experiments like the “community defender,” a new model of public defender with stronger ties to the neighborhoods where many defendants lived. By the early 1970s, as indigent defense reformers continued to navigate these challenges, the government had declared “War on Crime” and criminal caseloads had begun to rise—early harbingers of the phenomenon later labelled mass incarceration. Over the course of the twentieth century, lawyers had coalesced in theory around the idea of the public defender as a means to guarantee equality in the criminal courts, but remained unsuccessful at fully implementing that idea around the country.

The Due Process Right to a Safe and Humane Environment for Patients in State Custody: The Voluntary/Involuntary Distinction

1997 ◽  
Vol 23 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 339-362
Author(s):  
Sarah C. Kellogg
Keyword(s):  
Patient Safety ◽  
Staff Member ◽  
Suicide Risk ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Psychiatric Facility ◽  
State Custody ◽  
Staffing Levels ◽  
State Psychiatric ◽  
Deliberate Indifference

In December 1995, the Eighth Circuit decided Kennedy v. Schafer, holding that a teenage patient who committed suicide while under treatment at a state psychiatric facility had a constitutionally protected liberty interest in a safe and humane environment under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment if her status changed from voluntary to involuntary during the course of her admission. The fifteen year old patient, Kathleen Kennedy, had been identified as a suicide risk, and had been placed on “Protective Suicide Precautions,” which required a designated staff member to keep her in constant eyesight and to interact with her at fifteen to twenty minute intervals. Despite these stringent requirements for supervision and contact, Kathleen was found dead in her room more than two hours after her last contact with a staff member. Her parents brought suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against state and hospital officials, alleging that chronic understaffing and falsification of the records used to determine staffing levels amounted to a pattern of deliberate indifference to patient safety which violated their daughter’s protected liberty interest in a safe and humane environment.

In Camera Inspections of Privileged Records in Sexual Assault Trials: Balancing Defendants' Rights and State Interests Under Massachusetts's Bishop Test

1995 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-164
Author(s):  
Ellen M. Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Assault ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Fair Trial ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Public Scrutiny ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
Case Basis

A sexual assault trial requires a court to balance evidentiary privileges enacted by a state legislature against a criminal defendant's constitutional trial rights. State legislatures enact various privileges which either limit or prohibit the discovery of confidential communications in criminal trials. Such statutes reflect a firmly based legislative effort to protect citizens’ private and personal confidences from unwarranted public scrutiny. When a defendant charged with sexual assault seeks to compel discovery of the victim's privileged medical, psychiatric, or counseling records, a conflict inevitably arises. States and victims assert that courts must respect statutory assurances of confidentiality; defendants assert that their constitutional right to a fair trial and their right to confront the witnesses and evidence against them mandates disclosure. Resolution of this pressing conflict requires a careful balancing of both the state's and defendant's interests on a case by case basis.

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