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JonathanBonillaSecondPaper 7 - 23 May 2009 - Main.DanaDelger
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| | | Interesting paper, but a few points. One, you note that indigent defendents “choose between a public defender or pleading guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence” but this is not strictly accurate: Those defendants who would otherwise be guaranteed an attorney during trial (i.e. those who the judge has decided to sentence to any jail time at all or who have been charged with a crime carrying a potential penalty of 1 year or more) are also guaranteed an attorney during the pleading process. This is precisely why so many defendants are pressured to plead out by their public defenders, who have to decide how to allocate their extremely limited resources and time amongst their clients. It’s not correct to suggest, as you do, that indigent defendants choose between a public defender or a plea bargain; unless they waive the right to counsel, the public defender is part of the whole package. | |
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< | I’m also unsure about the main point of your essay. Are you primarily arguing that the reason we don’t give public defenders enough money to conduct data aggregating studies on potential jurors is because the bar for ineffective assistance claims is so high? If so, your energies seem to me misplaced. The Strickland standard does a lot to keep criminal defendants saddled with terrible lawyers and substandard lawyering, but I find it really hard to place your claims about data aggregation in that context. You may be right that a high standard of ineffective assistance keeps lawyers from doing a lot of things they might otherwise do, but this is an observation so general and unrelated to what I think is your real argument that it’s not even worth making. | >
> | I’m also unsure about the main point of your essay. Are you primarily arguing that the reason we don’t give public defenders enough money to conduct data aggregating studies on potential jurors is because the bar for ineffective assistance claims is so high? If so, your energies seem to me misplaced. The Strickland standard does a lot to keep criminal defendants saddled with terrible lawyers and lawyering, but I find it really hard to place your claims about data aggregation in that context. You may be right that a high standard of ineffective assistance keeps lawyers from doing a lot of things they might otherwise be compelled to do, but this is an observation so general and so unrelated to what I think is your real argument that I'm not sure it's even worth making. | | | If you really want to argue that not having such information has the “practical effect of dooming the defendant’s trial before it begins,” that is the argument you need to make instead of expounding about the ineffective assistance of counsel standard. I think that’s your major proposition, correct? That without having a level playing field in terms of juror information, indigent defendants won’t receive a fair trial? If that’s this case, unfortunately, you’ve presented only some solutions in search of a problem. At no point do you convince or even hint to your reader why “the ability to know every detail about a potential juror” is even desirable, much less necessary to having a fair trial. Until you convince your audience that these propositions are true (a tough sell in this crowd), you’re spinning your wheels arguing about how to get better data aggregation to public defenders. |
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