National Context

National Context:

January 2005: Gideon’s Broken Promise: America’s Continuing Quest for Equal Justice
(American Bar Association)

In 1963, the United States Supreme Court rendered one of its most important criminal justice decisions, holding that the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution guarantee that counsel be provided to indigent persons accused of a crime in state felony proceedings. Forty years after that historic decision, this report by the American Bar Association examines whether this country has realized the noble ideal articulated in Gideon. The report spends considerable attention on a sample of states, including Louisiana. Findings include: Indigent defense in the United States remains in a state of crisis, resulting in a system that lacks fundamental fairness and places poor persons in constant risk of wrongful conviction; Judges and elected officials often exercise undue influence over indigent defense attorneys, threatening the professional independence of the defense function; Efforts to reform indigent defense systems have been most successful when they involve multi-faceted approaches and representatives from a broad spectrum of interests; Model approaches to providing quality indigent defense services exist in this country, but those models are often not adequately funded and cannot be replicated elsewhere absent sufficient financial support.