The ABA Journal today carries Martha Neil's short item,"Public Defenders Often are Just as Effective as Private Counsel, Study Says."
A study of Chicago-area courts found that public defenders often are just as effective as private lawyers in persuading judges to grant bail, accept plea bargains and sentence defendants appropriately.
But for some defendants, the study found, retaining a private lawyer may be money well-spent, according to Miller-McCune. The bimonthly magazine, which focuses on public policy and academic research, is published by the Miller-McCune Center, a nonprofit in Santa Barbara, Calif.
The McCune Miller report is, "Public Defenders as Effective as Private Attorneys." It's written by Tom Jacobs.
Perhaps it’s time for someone to come to the defense of public defenders. A newly published look at Chicago-area courts finds that, when you consider the actual outcomes of judicial hearings, these underpaid and underappreciated attorneys do just as well as their private-sector counterparts.
“This study suggests that there is little difference in the quality of legal defense provided to defendants by private attorneys and public defenders,” a research team led by Richard Hartley of the University of Texas at San Antonio writes in the Journal of Criminal Justice. “The type of attorney representing the defendant was not influential on any of the four decision-making points examined here.”
The researchers examined a random sample of 2,850 offenders convicted of felonies in Cook County Circuit Court, “a large Midwestern jurisdiction which is similar to other large, urban jurisdictions in the country.” They compared cases where the defendant was represented by a private attorney or public defender, focusing on four stages of the judicial process:
• The decision to grant bail. The researchers looked at whether bail was set rather than whether it was made, since the latter is more a function of ability to pay rather than quality of legal representation.
• Plea-bargaining decisions. This served as a measure of whether an attorney was successful in getting the initial charge reduced.
• Whether the defendant, once convicted, served jail time.
• The length of sentence imposed on those convicts who were incarcerated.
“The overall results of this study generally support the idea that there is no difference between private attorneys and public defenders regarding case outcomes,” the researchers conclude.
And:
Why are public defenders so effective at representing their clients? One theory, according to Hartley, involves the “courtroom workgroup” model of justice, where the public defender, prosecutor and judge work together to dispose of cases. He notes that when the system functions in this way, “public defenders are in better positions than private attorneys to negotiate favorable plea bargains and to mitigate punishment.”
ScienceDirect.com carries the abstract of, "Do you get what you pay for? Type of counsel and its effect on criminal court outcomes," by Richard D. Hartleya, Holly Ventura Millera and Cassia Spohnb:
Although the Sixth Amendment of the constitution guarantees assistance of counsel to indigent criminal defendants, questions exist about the quality of this representation. Critics assert that ‘you get what you pay for’ and that public defenders are less effective than privately retained counsel regarding criminal justice outcomes. Some research, however, reveals that public defenders are as effective as privately retained counsel because of their working relationships with prosecutors and judges, the so-called courtroom workgroup. The current study tested the assertion that ‘you get what you pay for’ by examining the effect of type of counsel (public defenders versus private attorneys) on four different case processing outcomes for a large mid-western jurisdiction. Results generally show that type of counsel has no significant direct effect. Tests for interaction, however, suggest that for some defendants, type of counsel interacts with other key variables to influence certain outcomes.
Related posts are in the indigent defense and
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