We Each Have Our Roles to Play

I had been an appellate lawyer and a trial supervisor and a lawyer trying death penalty cases during my first six years as a Kentucky public defender.  In 1983, I moved 55 miles away from Frankfort, and was asked to open […]

Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth

Today, the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth (CFSY) promulgated its Trial Defense Guidelines: Representing a Child Client Facing a Possible Life Sentence, which is an exciting and much-needed publication detailing what is expected of attorneys who are representing children […]

Continuing the March of the Civil Right Warriors in Selma

This post originally appeared at TalkPoverty. I recently watched Selma, a stirring movie about the work of Dr. Martin Luther King and so many others who sacrificed to make our nation live up to its most cherished ideals of equality and liberty […]

Attica: There is No Fixing It

My first contact with guards’ threats was during the eight months a close family member was an inmate at Riker’s Island.  I visited several times during my first year of law school, driving the seven or eight hours from Buffalo, parking, […]

I’ll Have What She’s Having

I have spent a lot of the last 18 years at the Kentucky General Assembly.  The first 11 years were as the Kentucky Public Advocate, where I lobbied for the public defender budget, indigent defense reform, and against draconian bills.  I have […]

A Book Review of “Just Mercy; A Story of Justice and Redemption”

“Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson is part memoir, part sociopolitical history of the male African American experience in the United States. Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., and law professor at New York University School of […]

Racial Discrimination in Criminal Defense Cases Some Jury Selection Questions to Reduce the Problem

Discrimination refers to action against other people on the grounds of their group membership—particularly the refusal to grant members of another group the rights that would be granted to similar members of one’s own group.  Traditional out-groups have been members of […]

Proposed Legislation Would Dismantle Fiscally Sound Rule

Tennessee lawmakers have introduced legislation that would repeal T.C.A. 16-2-518, the so-called “75|PERCENT| Rule” for local public defender funding. The rule was established in 1992 and requires that local government provide funding to the public defender at 75|PERCENT| of any […]

Agency Relationships and Workload

There is no doubt we need to keep better data:  what we do, how long it takes; and what we SHOULD do, and how long that would take, to provide effective assistance of counsel.  Policymakers are right to demand this information. And […]

Defense Investigator Certificate Program

Ever since the United States Supreme Court decided in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) that a poor person is entitled to competent representation, there has been no formal program designed to address the need for competent criminal defense investigators.  No lawyers, prosecution or defense […]