• 27
  • October
    2011

"We've been running on a shoestring for years and we are minimally available to take care of all the guys on death row," says a death penalty attorney who works for a nonprofit legal aid organization. "But with this kind of funding loss, we're getting crippled."

As the Associated Press reports, state budget cuts and other forms of dried-up funding have left many organizations in the criminal justice system - from prosecutor and public defender offices to nonprofits - unable to provide adequate service to those who have been accused of crimes.

But, in our opinion, as long as there is a criminal defense lawyer - public or private - willing to defend the rights of those who have been accused of crimes, the criminal justice system does not face a crisis.

In some cases, the upshot of state budget cuts (if you can call it that) is that some people accused of certain crimes (such as drug possession) are on occasion getting a better result than they otherwise would have because of the strain in the criminal justice system.

As the Associated Press reports, some defendants are even getting charges against them dropped, even in murder cases; in one case it took four years for prosecutors to bring formal charges against the suspects in a shooting case after they'd been arrested.

The National Legal Aid & Defender Association's Ed Burnette says, "If you don't have enough lawyers to handle the cases [referring to public defenders], it leaves them open to speedy-trial challenges and ineffective assistance of counsel."

Source: Associated Press, "Criminal justice system faces crisis due to state budget cuts," 10/26/11