Indigent Defense: Gideon-Evading Machinations and The Costs of Defense

According to NACDL’s recent report surveying the various methods utilized by states to determine when an individual is indigent and entitled to appointed counsel, a majority of the states look to the Federal Poverty Guidelines (FPG) to find out whether a defendant qualifies for court-appointed counsel. On the surface, it would seem that this might be an objective yardstick of indigence, but in practice it proves to be prone to manipulation in myriad ways.