Tag Archives: Access to Counsel

Last year, when he was unable to "keep the people in his custody safe," Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart implemented punitive measures like prohibiting visitors to Cook County Jail from bringing in paper, attributing overdose deaths to paper soaked with narcotics and poisons. There were 17 deaths in 202...

BACKGROUND The concept of a public defender is relatively modern in the American legal system. For most of U.S. history, being poor meant defense by an attorney was unavailable to you. That all changed, however, in the seminal case, Gideon v. Wainwright, when the Supreme Court found it to be the...

In June, the Sixth Amendment Center published a report, “The Right to Counsel in Illinois: Evaluation of Adult Criminal Trial-Level Indigent Defense Services,” which shines new light on Illinois’ indigent defense system—and its inability to live up to constitutional standards. Commissioned by the...

INCOMMUNICADO DETENTION Arrested and deprived of communication without being charged with a crime — incommunicado detention in Chicago. In film and on TV, stories about police and criminals have long made for captivating story lines and entertaining ways to stream episodes until 4 am. In a ty...