Current Affairs14 Dec 2021

Does the Right to Counsel Actually Exist In the U.S.?

Today's guest is Stephen Bright, one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the United States. Prof. Bright teaches at Yale Law School and Georgetown Law, but has spent most of his life working as an advocate for poor people accused of serious crimes. During his decades in charge of the Southern Center For Human Rights, he argued multiple times in front of the U.S. Supreme Court and represented defendants some of the most difficult death penalty cases. Today we discuss the status of the right to a lawyer in the United States. Constitutionally, everyone is guaranteed an adequate defense, but in practice, the amount of representation one gets is based on the amount of money one can spend, and public defenders offices vary wildly across the country. Nobody is better familiar with the situation than Prof. Bright, whose writings include:

Counsel for the Poor: The Death Penalty Not for the Worst Crime But for the Worst Lawyer (1994)

Fifty Years of Defiance and Resistance After Gideon v. Wainwright (2013) (w/ Sia Sanneh)

Prof. Bright has produced an entire 40-part online course on issues of race and class as they apply to capital punishment, which is available for free on YouTube:

Capital Punishment: Race, Poverty, and Disadvantage

More of his work defending capital cases can be seen in the 2005 documentary film Fighting For Life In The Death Belt, which can be viewed free online.

His lecture to Stanford law students on the ethical responsibilities of lawyers can be viewed here.

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