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NACDL is committed to enhancing the capacity of the criminal defense bar to safeguard fundamental constitutional rights.
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NACDL’s mission is to serve as a leader, alongside diverse coalitions, in identifying and reforming flaws and inequities in the criminal legal system, and redressing systemic racism, and ensuring that its members and others in the criminal defense bar are fully equipped to serve all accused persons at the highest level.
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Panel from the 2020 Presidential Summit and Sentencing Symposium, co-hosted with the Georgetown University Law Center American Criminal Law Review
Most considerations of “criminal competency” are limited to questions of capacity to stand trial. Occasionally, issues of guilty pleas and ability to go pro se are also considered. And these are all critically important (and profoundly underconsidered). But there are multiple other questions of “criminal competency” that defense lawyers must know about and take seriously if they are to provide effective counsel. Also, within the general subject matter areas of trial and pro se status, there are embedded issues to which not nearly enough attention is paid.
Amicus curiae brief of the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in support of appellant.
