State v. Peart (Louisiana Supreme Court, 1993)
State v. Peart, 621 So.2d 780 (La. 1993): "Those accused of a crime are entitled to effective assistance of counsel."
In its 1993 decision State v. Peart, the Louisiana Supreme Court declared that Louisiana "faced a crisis in its indigent defense system." A young public defender named Rick Teissier stood before the Court and said that he was unable to provide his client Leonard Peart with the effective assistance of counsel that was required by the United States and Louisiana constitutions. Mr. Teissier was typical of a hard-working but over-extended and under-funded Louisiana public defender; forced to defend seventy cases at one time without any money for investigative support, expert witnesses, or even a legal library. These staggering deficiencies meant that his clients were pushed through the criminal justice system and into jail without being given a fair chance to defend themselves. Mr. Teissier's clients - like thousands of other individuals who were being represented by public defenders - were being denied the type of legal assistance that they were entitled. Mr. Teissier brought these complaints before the Louisiana Supreme Court with the hope that it would put an end to "systematic inequalities of the Louisiana indigent defender system."
The Louisiana Supreme Court agreed with Mr. Teissier and declared that the every criminal defendant is entitled to a lawyer who will effectively represent him. Noting the "general pattern" of "chronic underfunding of indigent defense programs" in Louisiana, the Court asserted that the indigent defense service is "so lacking that defendants who must depend on it are not likely to be receiving the reasonably effective assistance of counsel that the constitution guarantees." The Court further stressed that it took "reasonably effective assistance of counsel to mean that the lawyer not only possesses adequate skill and knowledge, but also that he has the time and resources to apply his skill and knowledge to the task of defending each of his individual clients." The Court went on to state that a defendant cannot be put on trial unless Louisiana fixed a system that provided counsel "who [were] so overworked as to be effectively unqualified." The Louisiana Supreme Court's decision in State v. Peart is a clear pronouncement that every defendant has a constitutional right to be represented by an attorney who has the skill, time, and resources to mount a vigorous defense.
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