Helping The Indigent Criminal
Fighting for a new state system that is fair to lawyers from both urban and rural areas, this attorney marked the current state system for lawyers’ compensation in representing indigent clients as unconstitutional. This lawyer found it unfair that attorneys are being required to pay for the indigent clients’ defense services and pointed this out to the court. The court justices’ reactions and questions during his presentation showed that they sympathized with him.
The problem of compensation is seen mainly in areas where there is an insufficiency of lawyers and there are zero public defenders’ offices. Judges are forced to set up mandatory indigent defense systems and assign cases to lawyers on a rotating basis. He said it’s the responsibility of the state, not the legal profession, to ensure indigent criminals receive a fair trail and defense.
Are lawyers entitled to their own rights found in the constitution? Lawyers, being the only people required by the state to give their time and wealth to the poor, do not get enough compensation for what they do. Other professionals and laborers should not be excluded from this requirement given solely to lawyers.
Whether a low or high compensation is given will not change the fact that an attorney must represent a poor client because it is his moral and ethical duty. The state is not bound by the constitution to provide payment to attorneys who do public defender work. Attorneys in Kansas have the moral and ethical obligation to provide public representation.
I will say that lawyers are probably running out of money by defending indigent clients. Even though the problem of compensation is something I’m sympathetic with, the law states that attorney must take indigent cases when they arise. Those who represent indigent clients have no right according to the constitution to make a profit.
For one attorney, he sees nothing wrong with helping the poor despite it being an obligation, provided that he does not encounter financial problems because of it. A justice pointed out that when the state encountered financial problems, the rate paid to private attorneys who represented indigents was cut down whereas the budgets of the public defenders’ offices remained the same.
The justice said she could appreciate the problem but compared the state’s current situation to the old federal system under which attorneys, mainly in urban areas, represented those facing federal charges in return for no compensation at all. A federal public defenders’ system is now available.
Since attorneys find themselves in financial difficulties having to spend money to defend indigent clients, the accused are also denied their constitutional rights to sufficient legal counsel. You end up choosing between your finances or the constitutional rights of your client. It denies the defendants their constitutional right to a fair trial.
Representing someone used to be an honor. Then there was an explosion in this thing and it was expanded from free legal counsel for felonies to include misdemeanors, care and treatment cases, juvenile and probate. The system has ridden a good horse to death. I am not against pro bono work and will proudly even do it. But this thing has simply gotten out of hand.
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