LA Times Editorial Calls on Schwarzenegger to Sign AB 590 and Help Increase Access to Legal Services
Friday, September 25, 2009
- Organization: Los Angeles Time
Excerpt: A legislative bill offers a smart, cost-effective way to provide civil case legal counsel to those who can't afford it.
It would be a mockery of justice and a waste of resources to force criminal defendants to trial without counsel. Not knowing rules of evidence, not realizing they are waiving their rights, unaware of the pitfalls of pleading to lesser charges, lawyerless defendants would be lost in a system that purports to grant equal justice. They would needlessly consume jurors' time as they flounder through trials, then would clog appellate courts while pursuing the justice they were denied in lower courts. But society, as well as the accused, is protected by the 6th Amendment right to counsel. Ever since the Supreme Court, in the historic case of Gideon vs. Wainwright, extended the right to counsel to state as well as federal trials in 1963, courts have supplied lawyers for defendants who can't afford them. It has proved to be quite a bargain all around.
Yet, on any given day, more than 4 million Californians who can't afford lawyers stand in jeopardy of losing their homes, the custody of their children, even the power to make their own decisions. Their fundamental rights are at stake, but in civil court. They are not charged with crimes, so the 6th Amendment does not guarantee their right to counsel.
