Saturday, July 14, 2007

Ahem...

The article proposes two explanations for the finding that clients with public defenders enjoy shorter sentences than those with appointed private lawyers: 1) that private appointed lawyers are paid by the hour, which creates incentives to wait too long to plead, and 2) that public defenders are better credentialed and more experienced. The first explanation does not seem plausible to me because it overestimates the extent of negotiation involved in the federal system -- prosectuors can sometimes negotiate for a specific sentence in the federal system, but in the vast majority of cases, it is the guidelines rather than the posture of the prosecutor that determines the sentence. You do see, however, a lot of private appointed counsel agreeing to plea agreements with waivers of appeal when they don't really get anything for the client. Waivers of appeal probably make the judges less careful about the correct application of the guidelines.
That leaves the second explanation -- public defenders are just bad motherfuckers...

1 comment:

slickdpdx said...

Public defenders are a great tax value. The majority are highly motivated and the institutional support is a big plus. People that put down PDs across the board don't have a very sophisticated understanding of the criminal justice system.

Not that more money, more investigators and lower caseloads wouldn't help...