Instead of the public defender system, how about providing poor persons who are accused of a crime with a voucher that they can use to hire their own attorney to represent them in court? Comal County, Texas will give this system a try in a few months.
From the San Antonio-Express News:
“Our belief is that a system of client selection can lead to improved services. Whether in fact that’s something that will occur needs to be empirically tested,” [former Indiana University School of Law dean Norman) Lefstein said. “I certainly hope that this will not be the only experiment in the United States involving client selection of counsel.”
But it will be the first. Results of the pilot program, including the costs, case outcomes and client satisfaction levels, will be tracked by the Justice Management Institute of Virginia.
“We’ve done an initial set of interviews with folks in Comal County to document how things operate,” said Elaine Borakove, institute president. “Client choice has never been tried in the United States before, so we’re very excited.”
The initiative was sparked by a 2010 Cato Institute paper calling for the use of free-market forces to address problems with America’s indigent defense systems, whether they’re based on court appointments or salaried public defenders.
The 2010 Cato paper mentioned is titled, “Reforming Indigent Defense,” by Stephen Schulhofer and David Friedman. In this blog post, David Friedman recalls the skepticism he received onthis idea 20 years ago from Judge Richard Posner. Another post here from Radley Balko.
