re: This is a very smart move by LA ...

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Sad Everyone should have the right to counsel

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It should be a good petri dish to see how many of the SJW lawyers actually care about justice, social or otherwise. How many of them will run to offer their services for free?

Yeah due process and the basic foundations of our legal system are unnecessary.

We all have a right to counsel.

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Can the bar not encourage criminal defense attorneys to perform more pro bono?

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Public defenders handle over 85% of criminal representation in the state of Louisiana. Asking the private defense bar to shoulder a pro bono caseload that would make any tangible dent in the problem would likely fail constitutional scrutiny.

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Holy hell that is a huge percentage. That's insane

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Indeed. I've seen that number in quite a few places over the years, but this was the first link I found when I just searched for a citation:

LINK

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The Southern Poverty Law Center said Louisiana has the nation's highest incarceration rate, the second-highest wrongful conviction rate, and that 85 percent of the defendants accused of a crime in the state are too poor to afford a private attorney.

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The Southern Poverty Law Center said Louisiana has the nation's highest incarceration rate, the second-highest wrongful conviction rate, and that 85 percent of the defendants accused of a crime in the state are too poor to afford a private attorney.

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Sad. The DA and Sheriff mafia run the criminal justice system in this state.

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and that 85 percent of the defendants accused of a crime in the state are too poor to afford a private attorney.

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I've worked pipelines for most of my life and I've seen this same recurring situation for close to thirty years. There'll be some kid driving a $40,000 pickup who claims he can't afford a hired lawyer for some minor frickup and rather than selling his truck and driving a beater for a year, a public pretender convinces him to take a felony with no jail time and he thinks he "won". Then the next minor frick up sits him down for 5 years. Its bad with trailer park whites but almost universal with young black guys. There are lots of defendants like that who do have the means but don't see the value of a hired attorney. One of the most important lessons my father ever taught me was to lawyer up, even if it means selling off all your toys.

From Morehouse, live in Ouachita, worked the whole Shreveport/East TX/OK area extensively the last 15 or so years. Texas PDs do seem considerably more engaged than LA but the LA shitshow has probably poisoned my mind against PDs as a whole.

I can tell you that, in my experience, the full time offices in the bigger cities generally do better work than the random contract guys in the smaller parishes, but underfunding is a bitch across the board.

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I didn't realize Louisiana was that bad off.

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The state funds the Public Defenders Offices and the DA's, but the DA's also get local funding and a cut of ticket and fine revenue as well as a share of proceeds from police auctions and civil asset forfieture. DA's have the police to investigate for them. Public Defenders don't even have the budget to spend more than 5 minutes with their clients before their trial date let alone hire private investigators to investigate the facts of the case. Crime labs are paid by the DA's, and have an incentive to give positive results in order to maintain business.

DA's make a decent living for a government employee and rarely work more than 50 hours in a week. Public Defenders work 80 hours of week for next to nothing.

Basically, if you're accused of a crime in Louisiana and have to use a public defender, the most they will be able to do for you is ask to take a plea bargain and maybe raise a blatantly obvious objection during a trial if you refuse to take the offered plea. They literally do not have the time or budget to do anything else.