Adam Ramirez

A member of the Philip Greenspun's Homepage community since May 1, 2006

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May 1, 2006, on Final Exam in Criminal Procedure:
This isn't my idea, but one suggested by a professor: perhaps taking the institutional element away from the public defender and district attorney's office would lessen the dangers of the plea bargaining system. It seems to me that DAs and PDs get entrenched into one side or the other, and lose sight of how the system as a whole is supposed to work. If the DA and PD offices were abolished and the government instead spent the money to appoint an attorney (randomly) to prosecute and an attorney (randomly) to defend, each of the attorneys coming from a common pool of criminal law attorneys, the war-zone atmosphere would be lessened (my county has this problem) and a defendant wouldn't be stuck with the stigma of having a public defender instead of a "real attorney." Such a setup could result in less of a caseload building up on any one attorney, and lessen the pressure on defense attorneys to settle fast. It would also reduce the hostility defendants have when they see their attorney ...