The right to counsel, embodied in the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, is the primary safeguard of a defendant’s rights within the criminal justice system. Adequate representation ensures that all other rights – to be free from unlawful search and seizure, against self-incrimination, to confront witnesses, to a jury trial, etcetera – are protected. In 1963, the United States Supreme Court, in Gideon v. Wainwright, made clear that the right to counsel applies to every citizen, regardless of whether the defendants can afford to pay an attorney. Sadly, in the United States today, the right to counsel is not being enforced. Lack of standards, oversight and funding have led thousands of people to be processed without their right to counsel.
NACDL is committed to ensuring quality representation for all accused individuals and has set out to help reform inadequate state and local indigent defense systems through technical assistance, public education, advocacy, and litigation.
Gideon at 50 Project
A Three-Part Examination of Indigent Defense in America
Rationing Justice is a 50-state survey of assigned counsel rates that identifies the current hourly rates paid to private attorneys who represent the indigent in criminal cases as well as the maximum fee that can be earned by those attorneys. The ABA Ten Principles of a Public Delivery System calls for the active participation of the private bar in indigent defense, even in areas where the volume of cases is sufficiently high to warrant the establishment of a public defender's office. Private attorneys must be available to handle case where the public defender's office has a conflict and to handle cases when public defender caseloads become excessive. Without their participation, our nation's indigent defense systems cannot guarantee that all defendants will receive equal justice under the law.
Learn more about this project.