Case Refusal: A Duty For A Public Defender and a Remedy for All of A Public Defender’s Clients

Steve Hanlon, General Counsel for the NAPD, has written a law review article that has been published in the Indiana Law Review, entitled: “Case Refusal: A Duty For A Public Defender and a Remedy for All of A Public Defender’s Clients.”  This article is largely a rejoinder to an article written by Alabama School of Law Professor John P. Gross in the Washington University Law Review.  In his article, Professor Gross argues that, under all the circumstances, representation by a public defender with an excessive caseload may be the defendant’s best option.  In his article Mr. Hanlon argues that, on the contrary, such representation is a terrible option, because it is flatly unethical and unconstitutional.  Mr. Hanlon describes, for the first time, a case refusal action that protects all of a public defender’s clients, both those she can ethically represent and those she cannot.  

You can read the article here: https://mckinneylaw.iu.edu/ilr/pdf/vol51p59.pdf