I agree with what you say, but I'm a little irked by how you say it. Perhaps I'm being too sensitive, but the tone strikes me as especially hard on defense attys.

The white knight defense atty who fights to the bitter end is an exception not because most defense attys are uninterested in or unwilling or unable to zealously represent their clients, but because for the vast majority of cases bare knuckle lawyering is unhelpful to the client. As you note, in most cases the client is guilty (even if of a lesser or related offense to the actual charge) and the govt can prove it.

Exhausting every confrontational hail mary litigation option in such a case is likely to produce a less favorable result than focusing on mitigating the consequences of the client's conduct, even if that means negotiating rather than filing that novel but almost certainly unsuccessful motion to dismiss that you just dreamed up.

It's certainly true that there are prosecutors who are frightened by blitzkrieg litigation (or the prospect of actually having to work) and may make concessions they otherwise wouldn't in the face of such an onslaught. But (in my experience anyway) they are the exceptions, and the strategy only works to the degree that the motions, etc. are a credible threat, and not just nuisance filings. I'd say the advantage enjoyed by wealthy defendants is pretty much limited to these cases, except in those jurisdictions with weak, overburdened, or underfunded public counsel systems (too many, of course).

What happened in Iowa is thus not just a "compressed" example of the everyday workings of the criminal justice system -- it's an extreme example. Not every guilty plea (very few guilty pleas, probably) is founded on this kind of shoddiness and injustice.

Just my sense from about a decade of defense lawyering in state, and now federal, court (and yes, there is no question that, in general,federal court features better lawyering).
 

pubdefender,

Thanks for your comments.

I don't mean to be hard on defense attorney. That's what I was, after all. Indeed I agree with everything you say.

I'm merely trying to present the reality, which is less romantic (and more practical) than the image often presented of our criminal justice system.

After some time on the job, it dawned on me that I was a part of a system that processed defendants. That's not how I thought about it going in.

Brian
 

As you note, in most cases the client is guilty (even if of a lesser or related offense to the actual charge) and the govt can prove it.

Then let them be prosecuted for the actual charge. If defense attorneys went to the mat here, the burden on the system might actually affect the practice of overcharging.

I have to wonder what the sentences for these workers might have been if the prosecutor and judge were faced with having to prove 300 separate-but-similar cases at (jury!) trial. Y'know...if the defense attorneys hadn't played ball.
 

I would love to see cases go through the court system quicker, I think this is going in the right direction, maybe to far, but the right direction.

By the way check out this sight.

www.humanrethink.net
 

Prof. Arkes has suggested that a proper interpretation of the 5th A would mean that no guilty pleas would be accepted -- every case must be tried. I'm not sure he's right about the interpretation, but it would certainly change the legal system.
 

Eric:

I don't know what your personal experience with prosecuting/defending/judging cases is, but I don't think you know what you are talking about here:

1) We don't know what the exact charges were, but if they are the usual illegal re-entry and/or document fraud type cases, they are generally easy to prove, don't require many witnesses, etc. It wouldn't be like trying 300 drug conspiracies, or homicides, for example;

2) Given the not very helpful speedy trial law and the fact that many of these folks probably couldn't make bond, I'm sure the govt and the court would be more than happy to work through the 300 cases while 200+ of the defendants sat in jail, doing much more than 5 months while waiting to (possibly) be acquitted (and deported, anyway);

3) You fail to factor in that these pleas were binding on the judge, who ordinarily could impose whatever (procedurally and substantively reasonable) sentence she wanted. I'm sure all of your exemplary heroic defendants would be overjoyed to be made examples of at sentencing, ostensibly for failing to accept responsibility or some such nonsense, but really for exercising their right to a(probably futile) trial. And I'm sure many would pursue appeals of their much longer sentences from whatever country they were deported to;

4) Although I've not worked in a "fast track" jurisdiction, these sentences seem likely to be a substantial discount over what many of these people would otherwise have gotten (if others know differently, please correctly) absent the deals, especially with the new emphasis on locking people up before shipping them back to their countries of origin;

5) I agree that overcharging is an egregious practice that needs to be curbed somehow. I didn't, however, suggest that it was operating here, nor is there any evidence that it was (unless you take the position that it wasn't worth charging these people at all; I happen to think that's right, but I don't expect most people would agree with me); and

6) It's all well and good to whine about defense attys not "going to the mat" to end systemic injustice, but I've got news for you -- defense attys don't do impact litigation. They represent individuals with unique interests personal to them. Grinding the system to a halt to stop overcharging or enforcement of laws you don't like is simply not something a defense atty can consider doing if it conflicts with his client's wants and needs. Don't like that? Then work with groups like the ACLU and FAMM to work on the systemic injustice while defense attys are doing their damndest to win trials when they can, and mitigate consequences when they can't.
 

Quoting PubDefender:

"1) We don't know what the exact charges were, but if they are the usual illegal re-entry and/or document fraud type cases, they are generally easy to prove, don't require many witnesses, etc. It wouldn't be like trying 300 drug conspiracies, or homicides, for example;"

From an report delivered by a federal interpreter, referring to the arrested workers, "They had all waived their right to be indicted by a grand jury and accepted instead an information or simple charging document by the U.S. Attorney, hoping to be quickly deported since they had families to support back home. But it was not to be. They were criminally charged with “aggravated identity theft” and “Social Security fraud” —charges they did not understand."

He goes on, "While we waited to be admitted, the attorney pointed out the reason why the prosecution wanted to finish arraignments by 10am Thursday: according to the writ of habeas corpus they had 72 hours from Monday’s raid to charge the prisoners or release them for deportation (only a handful would be so lucky)."

Continuing, regarding his working translating in interviews with the detained meat plant workers, "The purpose was for the attorney to explain the uniform Plea Agreement that the government was offering. The explanation, which we repeated over and over to each client, went like this. There are three possibilities. If you plead guilty to the charge of “knowingly using a false Social Security number,” the government will withdraw the heavier charge of “aggravated identity theft,” and you will serve 5 months in jail, be deported without a hearing, and placed on supervised release for 3 years. If you plead not guilty, you could wait in jail 6 to 8 months for a trial (without right of bail since you are on an immigration detainer). Even if you win at trial, you will still be deported, and could end up waiting longer in jail than if you just pled guilty. You would also risk losing at trial and receiving a 2-year minimum sentence, before being deported. Some clients understood their “options” better than others."

Providing an example of a typical case in which a man working at the plant explained how he wound up there. The man had walked from Guatemala: "This man, like many others, was in fact not guilty. “Knowingly” and “intent” are necessary elements of the charges, but most of the clients we interviewed did not even know what a Social Security number was or what purpose it served. This worker simply had the papers filled out for him at the plant, since he could not read or write Spanish, let alone English."

A fine, fine job on the part of the courageous I.C.E. agents, and the prosecution and judges who valiantly defended justice and the country!!

Here is a quote from one man sentenced to 5 months in prison: "“Your honor, you know that we are here because of the need of our families. I beg that you find it in your heart to send us home before too long, because we have a responsibility to our children, to give them an education, clothing, shelter, and food.”"

Thank heavens this cold-blooded criminal is behind bars, and his unworthy family, obviously guilty too, is starving in Guatemala.

Pdf version of the translators description:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/07/14/opinion/14ed-camayd.pdf

And interview with the translator at

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/14/court_interpreter_for_workers_rounded_up
 

The original poster wrote, " . . . and an overwhelming proportion of criminal defendants have participated in some form of criminal conduct."

Of course this must be true, and we know it just by looking at them. Suppose I think that some kid might have done something criminal . . . then I'll feel better about convicting him for something he didn't do, because hey! he's guilty of something, right?

Another way to think about the situation: they're all guilty anyways, if you were brought in by some police must be guilty of something. It's kind of like a logical necessity.

Everything above is sarcastic, as I hope is obvious. Seriously - overwork, heavy case loads etc. might be an understandable justification, or even a sympathetic one, but the notion that "they're all guilty of something" is highly disturbing. Never mind that being guilty of one thing doesn't make you guilty for another, (i) what independent evidence is there that "an overwhelming" number of criminal defendants have "participated in some form of criminal conduct"; (ii) why should we care if they have, without knowing what kind of criminal conduct. If a kid gets falsely held up on some criminal charges for robbery, is that justified because he participated in taking marijuana?
 

The underlying problem here, as with so much else that is wrong with our legal system and our society, is drug prohibition. Yet no political candidate will acknowledge the problem, and few jurors refuse to serve on drug cases.
 

This comment has been removed by the author.
 

Peter:

Your are misunderstanding me and the original poster if you think we condone, in any way, what happened here.

Also, I think you misunderstand the original poster's comment re: most defendants being guilty of something. I think he is getting at the fact that defendants are frequently charged with one crime when, in fact, they are really guilty of a similar/related and perhaps lesser offense (classic example: defendant charged with misdemeanor battery when he was really involved in a "consensual" bar fight which, in a lot of places, is a lesser offense). This often happens when a prosecutor wants to leverage a plea, but it is also frequent when police/prosecutors have to make credibility calls re: whose version of facts to believe. I.e., it can be malevolent, but it isn't always.

In any event, no one is talking about jacking up a harmless pot head for robbery.
 

"But it was not to be. They were criminally charged with “aggravated identity theft” and “Social Security fraud” —charges they did not understand.""

I think it's a gross insult to these people to suggest that they did not understand that they were stealing somebody else's identity, and committing social security fraud, when they used fraudulent IDs and social security numbers that belonged to somebody else.

They're illegal aliens, not stupid aliens.

Now, it's quite possible that they didn't understand what they were doing to be particularly wrong, but they sure as Hell knew it was illegal.
 

Response to PubDefender:

Thanks for your reply. I would say that I didn't misunderstand. I'm quite confident that I did not --- however I did deliberately choose a negative interpretation of what Professor Tamanaha wrote, and also, to a certain extent what you wrote.

I don't, and didn't, get the impression, from what you wrote that you condone what happened in Pottsville.

But, as I said, I took a very negative view of what you wrote, because of the horrible situation that the plant workers were put through. I admit being very upset, when I first read the account of the raid and subsequent prosecutions (i.e. the accoutn of the interpreter, which I linked to above).

I wouldn't pretend to know what you or the original poster do or don't condone. However, when I read in your response (point 5) that there was "no evidence" that overcharging was at play, I (irrationally) got a little irked. You also wrote that "we" didn't know what the charges were . . . Since I had read about the charges, and the utterly shameful and disgraceful proceeding these working people were put through, I reacted strongly, or badly, if you prefer.

By the way, it looks like the links I put up got chopped, so I'm hyperlinking them now.

This should take one to the interview, with the interpreter who wrote about the trails

And the account written by the interpreter is here.
 

This is a response to a comment made by Brett, above.

Please take a look at the interpreter's remarks, and also do some research on the whole affair.

In fact, the workers in the plant did not steal anyone's identity, they just signed papers, given to them by the plant, with fake social security numbers not numbers stolen from anyone.

There were no identities for them to steal.

No, nothing in the account of what happened suggests that the workers at the plant in Iowa are stupid. Not stupid, but hardworking people who take desperate measures to support their families, including walking to the U.S. from Guatemala, and failing to go through the bureaucratic nightmare of filling out the proper paperwork to get a job in Iowa.
 

Peter:

Fair enough. I could have been more precise (e.g., I should have made clear that "no evidence" of overcharging meant "no evidence of overcharging presented in original post").

And I suppose it's conceivable that, after 10 years in indigent defense (and many more, hopefully), I am too easily irked when I read something that I perceive as yet another (usually) overblown, groundless, and uninformed criticism of public counsel (said with a smile, by the way - I don't believe in emoticons).
 

perhaps they were aware of this story and were in a hurry
 

pubdefender is correct.

The fact is that about 80-85% of my clients are guilty as charged, another 10-12% are guilty of a lesser offense and the rest are truly innocent of the charges.

For the vast majority of cases, it makes far more sense to simply arrange the most favorable plea offer for the client rather than undergoing the expense and far greater risk of liability of going to trial.

Of course, you can achieve a great deal towards gaining the best possible settlement by conducting a thorough discovery and vigorous motion work, but courts and the DA rarely dismiss cases entirely.

Fighting to the bitter end is usually reserved for the small minority of cases where a minimum mandatory penalty of some sort makes taking a plea unacceptable or where the client is actually innocent and you have not been able to get the case dismissed.
 

This is an interesting case which ignores economic disparities, a bandaid approach to resolve what congress decided too difficult when the immigration issue last was visited.

On the philosophic note, I wonder what the counselor would think of ending plea bargaining altogether. It sometimes seems as pernicious as some of the state secrets defenses recently argued by the solicitor general.

When I began to interview central American nationals I was surprised to discover how uniformly their economic purpose was to support relatives south of the MX border. These are complex matters, and it is scant wonder our globalizing, offshoring vibrant businesses are reluctant to see solutions which raise costs.

Then there is the zeal with which determinate sentencing imbues congresspeople, and the obstacles to adjudicability and fairness these templates cause judges.
 

Peter, "fake social security numbers" that haven't been issued to somebody yet raise too many red flags to use. Those social security numbers did in fact belong to other people, even if the illegal aliens using them didn't know who.

Look, they damned well know they're here illegally, they know that the papers they sign to falsely attest to their qualification to work here are fraudulent. They're not morons, stop pretending they are.

These are people who deliberately set out to violate our immigration laws, and who are not at all averse to violating other laws in order to stay here. These are not innocent people. The innocent Mexicans are all back in Mexico, or carrying around genuine green cards.
 

Response to Brett's:

Please take a look at the interpreter's report. Perhaps he is lying, but here is part of what he wrote regarding the warrants, "I went back to the ICE Search Warrant Application (pp. 35-36), and what I found was astonishing. On February 20, 2008, ICE agents received social security “no match” information for 737 employees, including 147 using numbers confirmed by the SSA as invalid (never issued to a person) and 590 using valid SSNs, “however the numbers did not match the name of the employee reported by Agriprocessors…” “This analysis would not account for the possibility that a person may have falsely used the identity of an actual person’s name and SSN.”"

To guide us back to the original theme of this post, that is, the guilty plea machine, look at what happened in Pottsville. The ICE went on a fishing expedition, and then set about pressing unfounded charges against the people working in Pottsville. They had not stolen anyone's identity, and certainly had not knowingly taken the identity of someone else. They had either been using numbers not issued, or numbers which didn't match with whatever name they used. The were charged (all together) with more serious crimes in order to frighten them into pleading guilty to lesser charges (of which they were also not guilty).

I would advise reading more about what happened. The translator's account, by the way, is not unsympathetic to the Judges or the officials handling the trials.

Unlike the harsh and artificially legalistic tone of your comments, one Judge spoke after handing down a sentence, "“I appreciate the fact that you are very hard working people, who have come here to do no harm. And I thank you for coming to this country to work hard. Unfortunately, you broke a law in the process, and now I have the obligation to give you this sentence. But I hope that the U.S. government has at least treated you kindly and with respect, and that this time goes by quickly for you, so that soon you may be reunited with your family
and friends.""

To be ignorant of the complex and bureaucratic immigration laws of this country is not a crime---and you cannot deliberately set out to break laws which you don't understand.

First, it wrong to say that a person who breaks a law to achieve some other end, out of desperation, has done so deliberately - like a man who drives through a red light while taking his pregnant wife to the hospital. Second, it is wrong to say that you a person who breaks the law, out of ignorance, does so deliberately - like someone who fails to report his or her income correctly on their tax return - say they have made commercial transactions on eBay or Craigslist, and they don't report the income from this . . . That is not evidence that they deliberately broke tax regulations.

No one is suggesting that these working people in Pottsville are morons. It is unclear why you would make that suggestion. I take that a person who walks all the way from Guatemala, manages to make it to Iowa and is illiterate in both Spanish and English, is probably a lot smarter and more resourceful than I am. No nothing about what happened here suggests the working folks at the plant in Pottsville are morons or stupid. They sound like proud people who are desperate to look after their families, and have the courage to literally put their lives on the line to do so.

One the one hand, you have people coming to work in Pottsville, smart, tough, courageous, hardworking, doing right by their families, despite being poor and illiterate. On the other, you have a government obsessed with paperwork and bureaucracy that says if you didn't stand in line for 10 years, and go through every bit of form-filling-out in three countries, while your family starves, we're going make sure that you are punished . . . for coming to Iowa to contribute to the economy.

By the way these people are not Mexicans.
 

"To be ignorant of the complex and bureaucratic immigration laws of this country is not a crime---and you cannot deliberately set out to break laws which you don't understand."

This is sheer sophistry. You most assuredly CAN deliberately set out to break laws you don't understand. You don't have to know what actions would comply with the law, it's sufficient that you're aware the actions you are planing to undertake DON'T comply with it. And illegal immigrants do not enter this country under the delusion that they are doing so legally.
 

Re: the abolition of plea bargaining...I can't say I would favor it. The reality is that it operates to the benefit of a great many clients.

However, the federal district in which I currently practice is effectively without plea bargaining, by dictate of the US Atty. There are a few cases in which deals are struck (cooperation, or perhaps a really good suppression issue), but the number is miniscule. The rest are resolved by dispositive motions, naked guilty pleas, or trials.

The downside is obvious - most clients are convicted of the most serious charges against them, and receive stiffer sentences than they would have had plea bargaining been an option.

On the other hand, I have to say that I personally like the clarity and simplicity of it. Apart from the possibility of ticking off an impatient judge with scorched earth tactics, and thereby risking a higher sentence if those tactics fail, there is little disincentive to pulling out all of the (non-frivolous) stops on behalf of the client.

There is less emphasis on schmoozing the prosecutor, etc., and that avoids uncomfortable, worries about aggressiveness in one case prejudicing one's ability to effectively resolve another case through negotiation, and so on.

In short, this is pretty much what a 'true' adversarial system looks like, I think. I think it's only possible to sustain it because of the relatively small number of (generally strong) cases the feds bring. I seem to recall that the Philadelphia DA banned plea bargaining for a number of years in the 80s, crippling the courts.

I also think I recall that the upshot for defendants was almost uniformly bad -- although some who might otherwise have been held pre-trial got bail, most did not and ended up serving ridiculous stretches,speedy trial challenges were usually turned back, trials were sped along(especially bench trials -- Philadelphia had a two-tier system for misdemeanors then, I think) with due process compromised in the process, etc.

There are unquestionably a lot of things that could be improved about our criminal justice system, but abolishing plea bargaining would not be at the top of my list.
 

I am glad that I do not live in the US and only observe it at a distance through articles in newspapers and lately in blogs.

Your justice system is rotten to the core. There more problems than can be covered in any single blog post, but one of the biggest is the corrupt system of plea bargaining.

Because of the drug war and the moral panic about (blue collar) crime the US political class has committed the nation to buy more law and order than it can afford.
If all criminal defendants elected to go to trial the system would grind to a halt. A sensible response to this would be to examine the laws and abolish those that are of the least use until the number of cases was reduced to a manageable level. Instead of this you have adopted a corrupt system of plea bargaining.

Of course it makes sense to give a sentence discount for a guilty defendant who pleads guilty, but there should be a well defined limit on the discount, say 20%. Instead your system allows the prosecutors to force defendants to make a choice between a life wrecking sentence if they go to trial as against a tolerable punishment if they accept the plea.
The problem is that the discount allowed for a plea is so great that "innocent" defendants have to consider whether it is worth the risk of going to trial. Of course if the vaunted presumption of innocence actually existed, such defendants could go to trial confident of acquittal, however the truth is that it only exists if juries give effect to it, and the defendant from the criminal underclass of poor people and blacks faces a jury not of his peers but drawn from the smuggest members of the respectable classes. The latter are in moral panic about blue collar crime and inclined to a presumption of guilt for anyone brought before a court. These people see their job as helping the good guys, the police and prosecutors to but the bad guys away. Prejudice and cognitive bias in the jury room means that an "innocent" person who goes to trial has a real risk of getting the the draconian punishment threatened.

Plea bargaining means that the authorities never need to admit to making a mistake since they can always get a plea to something.

It would be in the interest of all criminal defendants to band together and go on plea bargain strike, thus forcing the system to grind to a halt, but unfortunately their is no union for criminals. When defendants are represented by lawyers the lawyer is obligated to do what is best for his particular client, not what is best for all defendants. Therefore a lawyer will have to advise his client to take a plea even if he believes that the client is in fact innocent because he knows that factual innocence is no guarantee of acquittal.

What is needed is some mechanism for limiting the discount between the sentence the defendant gets if found guilty at trial and that which goes with a plea so that the factually innocent have incentive to go to trial thus clogging the system and forcing the state to rethink excessive laws.
 

TheEvilOne wrote:-

"Your justice system is rotten to the core. There more problems than can be covered in any single blog post, but one of the biggest is the corrupt system of plea bargaining."

Just about all western judicial systems have plea bargaining in one form or another. Perhaps the important thing for a just system is effective judicial control of the process.

I no longer do any criminal work but, by way of example of how our system deals with sentencing, readers may like to look at publications of our Sentencing Guidelines Council - a good example are these guidelines for assaults: Assaults Against the Person Guidlines.

There are also Guidelines for Reduction for Guilty Plea. Put very shortly there is an approximate reduction of 1/3 for a plea at the earliest possible time which reduces to 1/10 for a plea "at the door of the Court".

In our system, plea bargaining with the prosecution does not seem to have the importance it assumes in the USA.

Yes, one offers pleas to lesser offences (eg, a plea to a lesser degree of assault charge, or an offer of a plea of diminished responsibility to a charge of murder (which leaves the sentence to the discretion of the Court rather than a mandatory life sentence, but the Court will have read the witness statements and will want to know why the plea to a lesser offence than that charged has been accepted.

Save where there is some very special mitigation to be put forward (such as assistance to the authorities in relation to other investigations), the prosecutor does not have anything to say about sentence other than to put in evidence as to previous convictions.

Mitigation of sentence is a discussion between the defence and the Court.
 

TheEvilOne:

The latter are in moral panic about blue collar crime and inclined to a presumption of guilt for anyone brought before a court....

We find this in many places, some surprising or even alarming:

"Six military jurors, who were handpicked by the Pentagon, began considering the case Monday after a two-week trial."

[from here]

"The alternate, an Army lieutenant colonel who was excused Friday when the trial concluded, conceded she had 'a suspicion' that Hamdan must be guilty of something to have ended up imprisoned here."

[from here]

And this from jurors whose purported claim to fame was their professional background and education:

"Scott Silliman, a Duke University law professor and 25-year veteran of the Air Force Judge Advocate General corps, has criticized aspects of the military commissions but believes the jurors will deliberate without bias.

"'They're all senior officers. This is a highly educated, sophisticated jury, very different from what you would find in Miami or anywhere else where they go by voter registration' to summon potential jurors, Silliman said."

Cheers,
 

Mourad

"Just about all western judicial systems have plea bargaining in one form or another."

You talk of guidelines for pleading guilty, but you are assuming that the charge at trial is the same as the charge offered in a plea. I am not a lawyer and what I understand of the US system is from TV documentaries, newspaper reports and blogs.

My impression is that plea bargains involve threats of charges at trial with draconian mandatory minimums as against a charge carrying a much lower sentence in the offered plea.
If the prosecution case is very weak they may offer a plea with time served or probation so they don't have to admit a mistake. The "innocent" defendant who takes the plea thus ends up with a criminal
record and looses entitlement to government assistance in education and housing. My impression is that the judge handling a plea just rubber stamps it, without knowing what was threatened for going to trial and the judge at trial does not know about the plea bargain offered.
 

To clarify, part of any defence to criminal charges involves consideration whether the client should plead guilty to a lesser offence (with, of course, a lesser sentence). I would be surprised if that were not part of the US repertoire as well.

I suspect there may be a much bigger problem with the excessive length of mandatory US sentences - often a reflection of a desire of legislators (and perhaps elected prosecutors too - now that's bad) to be seen to be tough on crime rather than on the causes of crime. We have a similar problem here with the legislators - but, happily, not with the prosecutors.

In the dim and distant past when I did criminal work, it used to be a rough rule of thumb that 50% of defendants incarcerated would be 'sad', 25% would be 'mad' and only 25% would be 'bad'. In other words 75% of those incarcerated could have been dealt with better (and more cheaply) outside prison.

Nowadays in the UK an enormous percentage of crime is drug related. Once upon a time, addicts could obtain hard drugs, such as heroin, on the national health service from an authorised medical practitioner. There was no black market (why pay when you can get your fix free?) and little involvement of professional criminals.

Then a lady called Margaret Thatcher decided to start a 'war on drugs' and banned the prescribing of heroin - the drugs mafias moved in and, today, a very high percentage of crime is drug related. Yet another example of the 'cure' being worse than the disease.

"Tough on crime" nearly always ends up being "tough on the taxpayer".
 

@ Blogger pubdefender said...
...strikes me as especially hard on defense attys.

As a ancient DFH i can say that I've had more than my fair share of experience with those "officers of the court" known as Public Defenders .

On the single occasion when an appointment was made that I could live with, the prick of a DA had him switched off my matter and replaced by a member of the machine.
All the others were loathsome hacks.
Their failings include, but are not limited to, drunkenness, ignorance of the law, inattention to detail, lack of adverserial skill, gross incompetence, laziness and bias.
Their collective eagerness to suck up to judges & prosecutors is deplorable. Most were more interested in their wardrobes & cars than the law.
Many of these useless self-serving wastrels would have gladly packed me off to the US gulag and; had I not fired most of them & stood up for myself, I likely would have passed many a year incarcerated.
I could go on but I have to puke atm.
 

Brian:

Another separate issue here is the nebulous grey area that currently exists between immigration law, which is largely a civil, regulatory area, and criminal law. In response to disproportionate populist outrage over illegal immigration, the criminal justice system is supplanting the complex regulatory scheme that is the Immigration and Naturalization Act.
SCOTUS has warned, as have many other circuits, that regulating those "illegally present" in the US. (i.e., illegal immigrants who are not caught in the act of crossing the border illegally)is a matter for DHS (fmr INS)and their court system.
To get around this we are seeing more and more undocumented immigrants being charged for ancillary crimes and sentenced excessively.
This is back door immigration reform in progress, and it comprimises not only the rule of law, but both criminal law enforcement & immigration enforcement.
 

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