News clips
- Assigned counsel representation in Cortland County is the subject of continuing debate, according to this article in the Cortland Standard.
- Two wrongful convictions were recently vacated in Bronx County as reported in the New York Law Journal
- Arraignment via video conference is a priority of the Saratoga County District Attorney, according to this article in the Times Union.
- Juveniles represented by attorneys on 'flat fee' contracts in Los Angeles do worse, obtaining more serious convictions and longer sentences than those represented by the public defender's office according to a study published in the Criminal Law Bulletin, an earlier version of which can be found here. Contract attorneys also filed significantly fewer motions and requests for dismissal, and used significantly fewer expert witnesses, leading the authors to describe the treatment of children by the system as "arbitrary and disparate." Citation: Yamashiro, Azzam & Himmelfarb, 2013. "Kids, Counsel and Costs: An Empirical Study of Indigent Defense Services in the Los Angeles Juvenile Delinquency Courts." Criminal Law Bulletin, vol. 49, no. 6, pp.1,351-1,378.
- Clients of public defenders in four Florida counties were found to be more likely to be detained in bail hearings, more likely to be convicted, and less likely to have charges dismissed than those who retained private counsel according to this article. No differences were found in the rates of pleading charges down, or prison sentence length, however. The study examined a sample of approximately 2,000 cases. Citation: Williams, 2013. "The Effectiveness of Public Defenders in Four Florida Counties." Journal of Criminal Justice, vol. 41, pp.205-212.
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