A public defender is a lawyer appointed to represent people who otherwise cannot reasonably afford to hire a lawyer to defend themselves in a trial. Several countries provide people with public defenders, including the UK, Belgium, Hungary and Singapore, and some states of Australia. Brazil is the only country in which an office of government-paid lawyers with the specific purpose of providing full legal assistance and representation to the needy free of charge is established in the constitution. The Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, requires the US government to provide legal counsel to indigent defendants in criminal cases. Public defenders in the United States are lawyers employed by or under contract with county, state or federal governments.
In civil law countries, following the model from the French Napoleonic Code of criminal procedure, the courts typically appoint private attorneys at the expense of the state.
Australia
The Australian states of Victoria and New South Wales both have dedicated Public Defenders chambers. These chambers retain barristers who are employed by the state government to represent legally-aided clients who are charged with serious indictable offences. In New South Wales, Public Defenders only appear in criminal matters, both at trial and appellate level,[1][2] while in Victoria, Public Defenders also undertake some family law and civil work.[3]
The New South Wales Senior Public Defender is Belinda Rigg, Senior Counsel,[4] who was the first female public defender in NSW upon her appointment in 2019.[5] In Victoria, the Chief Public Defender is Tim Marsh.[3]
In Queensland, the Legal Aid Office (Queensland) was merged with the Public Defender's Office in 1991, in an expanded service providing clients to access family, civil and all criminal law services.[6]
Brazil
The Constitution of Brazil uniquely provides for a public defenders' office (Defensoria Pública) at both state and federal levels.[7][8] Public defense is a right to poor people, who must declare, formally, that they cannot afford regular legal aid, to benefit from public defenders' services.[8]
Public defenders, like prosecutors and judges, are admitted to their positions through civil service examination. The public defender's office assists the poor and lower middle-class in both civil and criminal matters, although the poorest states in the country are still struggling to set up a state public defenders office.[9][10]
Public defense in Brazil dates back to 1897, when a decree mandated government-funded legal assistance in the state of Rio de Janeiro, then called Legal Assistance (Assistência Jurídica). The Constitution of 1937 extended Assistência Jurídica to the entire country, but without the same effectiveness that is derived from the current, 1988 Constitution.[11]
Germany provides legal representation, legal advice, and help in covering court costs in civil cases to those who cannot raise the necessary funds to hire an attorney, but only when there is a reasonable chance of success.[12] In criminal cases where the defendant faces at least one year of imprisonment, the defendant has the right to legal counsel.[13] Although there is a right to legal defense, there is no organized public defender system. Instead, any lawyer can be appointed to provide counsel to a specific defendant, and the defendant can select a specific lawyer. Questions of payment are deferred until the end of a trial, and the court will decide the cost of the case to the losing party. The defendant will not be charged for legal services if acquitted. If convicted, the defendant will be required to pay the lawyer's expenses unless the court finds that the defendant is indigent.[14]
Hungary
In Hungary, the police, the public prosecutor or the court (depending on what individual cases require) appoints a criminal defender at the state's cost to defend those who can not afford a chosen lawyer. The defence counsel's participation is required by the Criminal Procedure Act. Usually a private lawyer is appointed, one for each defendant, and conflict of interest between contradicting suspects is avoided, e.g. the same lawyer may not represent two accused whose evidence is mutually contradictory. If convicted, although in principle the defendant is liable for the fee, it is rarely pursued.[citation needed]
India
In India, free legal aid is provided by National Legal Services Authority. It is available at all the levels of court.[15]
Singapore
Legal assistance in Singapore is provided by the State and the Pro Bono Services Office of the Law Society.
The State provides legal assistance in criminal cases where the accused faces the death penalty.[16] The government also provides legal representation and advice in civil cases such as for divorce, child custody, adoption, wrongful dismissal, letters of administration/probate, tenancy disputes, claims in contract and tort, through the Ministry of Law's Legal Aid Bureau (LAB).[17] Assistance from the LAB is not free, and most clients are required to contribute towards the costs of the work done, but the amount a client is charged depends on a number of factors, among them the client's financial means.[18]
The Pro Bono Services Office of the Law Society runs the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme, which provides criminal legal assistance to the poor and needy who are unable to afford a lawyer, and are facing charges in a Singapore court for non death-penalty offences under statutes covered by CLAS.[19]
In Scotland a wider network of Public Defender Solicitor Office (PDSO) lawyers employed by the Scottish Legal Aid Board (SLAB) are available to represent those accused of crimes in addition to private lawyers (duty solicitors) paid under the legal aid scheme. The PDSO is a not-for-profit organisation funded through SLAB.[22]
The 1963 US Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright held that the Sixth Amendment's right to counsel provision[23] requires the government to provide legal counsel to indigent defendants in criminal cases.[24] Different jurisdictions, however, use different approaches in providing legal counsel for criminal defendants who can't afford private attorneys. Exactly which defendants qualify as "indigent" also varies by jurisdiction: Often a state will stipulate a maximum income threshold above which a defendant is not considered to be indigent, and thus does not qualify for a public defender. This threshold may vary depending on the severity of the crime with which a defendant is charged. For example, a defendant's income may be too high to entitle him or her to a public defender in misdemeanor proceedings, but sufficiently low to qualify them as indigent when faced with a felony charge.
The term public defender in the United States is often used to describe a lawyer who is appointed by a court to represent a defendant who cannot afford to hire an attorney. More correctly, a public defender is a lawyer who works for a public defender's office, a government-funded agency that provides legal representation to indigent defendants. The court appoints the public defender's office to represent the defendant, and the office assigns a lawyer to the defendant's case. In the federal criminal court system and some states and counties, representation is through a publicly funded public defender office. The state of Oregon is the only state in which indigent defense is exclusively provided by non-profit firms which are contracted and funded by the state.[25]
Other courts may appoint private lawyers who have agreed to represent indigent defendants, with appointment being either on a contractual basis, through which the lawyer accepts an agreed number of cases from the court for the term of the contract, or a case-by-case basis.[26] The majority of the states in the U.S. employ some combination of these delivery models.[25]
↑ The amendment reads: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires U.S. states to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who are unable to afford their own. The case extended the right to counsel, which had been found under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to impose requirements on the federal government, by imposing those requirements upon the states as well.
Legal aid is the provision of assistance to people who are unable to afford legal representation and access to the court system. Legal aid is regarded as central in providing access to justice by ensuring equality before the law, the right to counsel and the right to a fair trial. This article describes the development of legal aid and its principles, primarily as known in Europe, the Commonwealth of Nations and in the United States.
Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932), was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in which the Court reversed the convictions of nine young black men for allegedly raping two white women on a freight train near Scottsboro, Alabama. The majority of the Court reasoned that the right to retain and be represented by a lawyer was fundamental to a fair trial and that at least in some circumstances, the trial judge must inform a defendant of this right. In addition, if the defendant cannot afford a lawyer, the court must appoint one sufficiently far in advance of trial to permit the lawyer to prepare adequately for the trial.
Bruce Robert Jacob is a former Assistant Attorney General for the State of Florida during the early 1960s. He represented Louie L. Wainwright, the Director of the Florida Division of Corrections, in the Supreme Court case of Gideon v. Wainwright, decided in March 1963, regarding the right to counsel of indigent defendants in non-capital felony cases in state courts. The attorney representing the Petitioner, Clarence Gideon, was Abe Fortas, a Washington, D.C. lawyer who later became a Justice of the Supreme Court. The previous 1942 Supreme Court case of Betts v. Brady required the appointment of counsel for an indigent defendant at state expense if there was a “special circumstance” present in the case which made it necessary for counsel to be provided for the defendant to receive a fair trial. For example, if the defendant was indigent and was extremely young, or lacked education or experience, was unfamiliar with court procedures, or if the charges against him were complex, the trial court was required under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to appoint counsel. Jacob argued against any extension of the defendant's right to counsel. The Court in Gideon overruled Betts and required state courts to appoint attorneys for defendants in all felony prosecutions.
Dietrich v The Queen is a 1992 High Court of Australia constitutional case which established that a person accused of serious criminal charges must be granted an adjournment until appropriate legal representation is provided if they are unrepresented through no fault of their own and proceeding would result in the trial being unfair.
In criminal law, the right to counsel means a defendant has a legal right to have the assistance of counsel and, if the defendant cannot afford a lawyer, requires that the government appoint one or pay the defendant's legal expenses. The right to counsel is generally regarded as a constituent of the right to a fair trial. Historically, however, not all countries have always recognized the right to counsel. The right is often included in national constitutions. Of the 194 constitutions currently in force, 153 have language to this effect.
A duty solicitor, duty counsel, or duty lawyer, is a solicitor whose services are available to a person either suspected of, or charged with, a criminal offence free of charge, if that person does not have access to a solicitor of their own and usually if it is judged by a means test that they cannot afford one. The system is operative in several Commonwealth countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Solicitor advocate is a hybrid status which allows a solicitor in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong to represent clients in higher courts in proceedings that were traditionally reserved for barristers. The status does not exist in most other common law jurisdictions where, for the most part, all solicitors have rights of audience in higher courts.
Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806 (1975), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that criminal defendants have a constitutional right to refuse counsel and represent themselves in state criminal proceedings.
The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland is a legal aid society in Cleveland, Ohio established in 1905. It helped pioneer a nationwide legal aid movement whose leaders held to a simple but profound principle: that rich and poor alike are entitled to equal treatment under the law.
A criminal defense lawyer is a lawyer specializing in the defense of individuals and companies charged with criminal activity. Some criminal defense lawyers are privately retained, while others are employed by the various jurisdictions with criminal courts for appointment to represent indigent persons; the latter are generally called public defenders. The terminology is imprecise because each jurisdiction may have different practices with various levels of input from country to country. Some jurisdictions use a rotating system of appointments, with judges appointing a private practice attorney or firm for each case.
Legal Aid Ontario (LAO) is a publicly funded and publicly accountable non-profit corporation, responsible for administering the legal aid program in the province of Ontario, Canada. Through a toll-free number and multiple in-person locations such as courthouse offices, duty counsel and community legal clinics, the organization provides more than one million assists to low-income Ontario residents each year.
Pro se legal representation comes from Latin pro se, meaning "for oneself" or "on behalf of themselves" which, in modern law, means to argue on one's own behalf in a legal proceeding, as a defendant or plaintiff in civil cases, or a defendant in criminal cases, rather than have representation from counsel or an attorney.
In the United States, federal public defender organizations are entities in the United States Federal Government, and their staffs are federal employees. Federal public defenders handle criminal trials in United States Federal Court for alleged federal crimes or criminal cases involving state law violations in which a federal court can assert federal jurisdiction.
Legal aid in the United States is the provision of assistance to people who are unable to afford legal representation and access to the court system in the United States. In the US, legal aid provisions are different for criminal law and civil law. Criminal legal aid with legal representation is guaranteed to defendants under criminal prosecution who cannot afford to hire an attorney. Civil legal aid is not guaranteed under federal law, but is provided by a variety of public interest law firms and community legal clinics for free or at reduced cost. Other forms of civil legal aid are available through federally-funded legal services, pro bono lawyers, and private volunteers.
The Assistance of Counsel Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right...to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence."
The headquarters of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender is located in the William Donald Schaefer Tower; Suite 1400, 6 St. Paul Street, Baltimore, MD 21202. Natasha Dartigue is the Public Defender.
The Public Defender Service (PDS) for the District of Columbia provides legal defense to individuals on a court-appointed basis for criminal and delinquency cases indigent adult and juvenile defendants/ respondents. Its Mental Health Division provides representation to persons facing involuntary civil commitment based on allegations that the person is a danger to self or others as a result of mental illness. Its parole division represents parolees charged with violating parole and facing revocation before the United States Parole Commission. PDS also provides other legal-related services in DC.
In the United States, a public defender is a lawyer appointed by the courts and provided by the state or federal governments to represent and advise those who cannot afford to hire a private attorney. Public defenders are full-time attorneys employed by the state or federal governments. The public defender program is one of several types of criminal legal aid in the United States.
Legal aid in Germany is "embedded in the court system and is seen as a part of this". Germany was the first country to provide free legal aid representation for the poor in 1919, and represents the archetype of the so-called judicare system.
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