In a unanimous decision, the court ruled that a defendant’s criminal charges must be dismissed if the state has failed to provide a defense attorney for 60 days in a misdemeanor case or 90 days in a felony case, after the defendant’s first court appearance. The ruling could force the dismissal of more than 1,400 criminal cases.
  • Lembot_0006@programming.devEnglish
    4·
    5 days ago

    Is this law meaningful? What stops keeping a bunch of $500 per month imbeciles with lawyer status just to fit such holes? Oh, you need a lawyer? Here you are. Yes, he’s stupid as a cork, but his job is to exist, no to actually defend you, dumbass…

    • N0t_5ure@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      5 days ago

      As a practical matter, to be a lawyer typically you have to go to college for 4 years, go to law school for 3 years, and then take the bar exam. As a consequence, there really aren’t too many imbecile attorneys, as the system weeds them out. That said, the top-tier students tend to get “biglaw” jobs that pay a lot of money, and public defenders are generally people with more modest options, such that any law job tends to look good.

      • Lembot_0006@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        You shouldn’t read my message literally. I just meant the worst and cheapest lawyers whose presence will just be a formality, not a real help.

          • Paragone@piefed.socialEnglish
            2·
            5 days ago

            seconding this: Ontario, Canada, removed the “duty counsel” obligation from competent working lawyers, & gave that work to lawyers who couldn’t compete as real lawyers ( based on both experience & background information given me by other lawyers ), & now you get “duty counsel” which WON’T DO THEIR ACTUAL JOB, so people who SHOULD have all charges dismissed, don’t get that, unless we hire a REAL lawyer, because the public-defenders won’t do what they’re supposed to do.

            Idiocy.

            & the whole industry of getting people convicted because they couldn’t afford a real lawyer … why should any jurisdiction which has integrity & LivingValues be doing that??

            Obviously, just part of selling-out-more-completely, … bah.

            Criminally-irresponsible “management” of our legal-system, in my view.

            _ /\ _

  • Paragone@piefed.socialEnglish
    2·
    5 days ago

    That’s insane:

    Some people can’t get lawyers because they’re abusive scum, & have mis-treated all their previous lawyers.

    Those people now get automatically aquitted??

    They should have to self-represent, & have access to the required resources ( including books instructing how to do that, audiobooks for dyslexics, & access to the information enabling them to self-rep, checklists for what they have to do to actually accomplish self-rep, etc ) & time.

    Sometimes it’ll be economic, sometimes it’ll be because no good lawyer will be abused by them, sometimes it’ll just be because there aren’t enough lawyers to go 'round.

    but you CAN’T just acquit the evil ones, on technicalities: you’re in contempt of your responsibility as serving your civilization, if you’re a court doing that.

    _ /\ _