For many years, Michigan’s public defense system was deficient, failing to guarantee the effective assistance of counsel required by the Sixth Amendment. Michigan delegated responsibility for providing public defense to individual counties, providing no statewide training for public defense attorneys, no performance standards to govern their practice, and no review of their performance. In 2008, after an extensive investigation, the National Legal Aid and Defender Association issued a report that concluded that Michigan’s systems were some of the nation’s worst. 

State ex rel. Missouri Public Defender Commission, Cathy R. Kelly and Rod Hackathorn v. The Honorable John S. Waters and the Honorable Mark Orr (Mo. 2012)

In 2023 the ABA adopted a revised version of the Ten Principles of a Public Defense Delivery System. These replaced the version initially adopted in 2002. 

A report by the Sixth Amendment Center, commissioned by NACDL and supported by the NACDL Foundation for Criminal Justice and Koch Industries. [Released October 2016]

When a person is accused of a crime, the U.S. Constitution guarantees that person the right to a lawyer even if they cannot afford one. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed this basic principle more than a half century ago in Gideon v. Wainwright, and in subsequent cases that expanded the right to misdemeanor prosecutions. Yet this right is violated every day in South Carolina’s magistrate and municipal courts – collectively referred to as summary courts – where scores of people are convicted, sentenced, and sometimes incarcerated, without having been represented by counsel. [Released April 2016]

The crisis in public defense in Louisiana has been well-documented by the news media over the past several years. Stories of overloaded public defenders, unrepresented individuals languishing in jail, and mass pleas have shocked the nation’s conscience, but the system’s shortcomings have long evaded reform. However, much coverage of the public defense crisis in Louisiana, the state with the highest incarceration rate in the nation, has focused its attention on the consequences of the crisis rather than its causes. [Released March 2017]

Researchers systematically gathered data from magistrate and municipal courts in five counties. The research confirms that there is a pervasive lack of procedural justice and fairness in these courts. Far too many accused persons are not advised of basic constitutional rights, and even when they are, those rights are not respected. [Released January 2017]

On April 6 and 7, 2017, NACDL, the Foundation for Criminal Justice, the Monroe Freedman Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics at Hofstra University’s Maurice A. Deane School of Law, the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, the Center for Court Innovation, and the State of New York Unified Court System convened a conference designed to explore the impediments to and reforms needed to ensure effective justice in all stages of the criminal process, with a particular focus on the judicial role in high-volume misdemeanor courts. [Released December 2017]

The Right to Counsel in State Courts

This 50-state Survey of Right to Counsel Standards documents how states decide when a qualifying individual charged with criminal wrongdoing is entitled to receive appointed counsel. Some states only appoint counsel in cases of actual incarceration following conviction, while others mandate appointed counsel based solely on the fact that a defendant has been charged with a crime. Other states fall between these standards and appoint counsel when a sentence of incarceration is authorized or likely to be imposed following conviction. [Released October 2016]

NACDL created The Commission to Reform the Federal Grand Jury, drawing on the expertise of a variety of professionals throughout the criminal justice system. Commissioners spent two years examining the need for changes in the grand jury process and produced a Federal Grand Jury Bill of Rights based on their findings. The ten reforms set forth in this Bill of Rights, largely echoing those proposed by the American Bar Association (ABA) more than 20 years ago, would restore balance to the grand jury process and better protect against unwarranted prosecutions. [Released May 2000]

Statement of Interest of the United States in Hurrell-Harring v. New York.

Letter to the Judicial Conference Standing Committee on Rules of Practice & Procedure regarding proposed rule changes to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

NACDL urges all states and U.S. territories to adopt such constitutional provisions, laws or regulations necessary to guarantee that every accused person, irrespective of financial capacity to engage counsel, shall be guaranteed counsel at the first appearance before a judicial officer at which liberty is at stake or at which a plea of guilty to any criminal charge may be entered. ............

Brief for Harris County Public Defender, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo*, Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, Precinct 1* and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as Amicus Curiae in Support of Plaintiffs-Appellees (*as elected officials and not on behalf of Harris County government).