The NY Times had an excellent front-page story yesterday (access it here) on this issue. A Mississippi County is suing the State of Mississippi on the grounds that it is too poor "to provide defendants with anything more than assembly-line justice. Mississippi is among a handful of states that provide no money for the defense of the indigent in noncapital cases." More:
The lawsuit, which will go to trial here this month, is in its way a commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, which held that poor people accused of serious crimes are entitled to legal representation paid for by the government. The new case is being litigated by the same firm, Arnold & Porter, that represented Clarence Gideon, a Florida drifter accused of breaking into a poolroom who was tried and convicted without a lawyer. (The firm was appointed after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case based on Mr. Gideon's handwritten petition.) And the lawsuit is seeking answers to some questions left open by Gideon that legal scholars, government officials and advocates for the poor have been asking for years: How decent a lawyer does the constitution require? Who should pay for that lawyer? And how much money should be paid?Posted by Marcia Oddi at April 16, 2003 07:53 AM