Tag Archives: Public Defense

Entered at the end of September 2022, a newly signed consent decree, #LetUseBreathe Collective v. City of  Chicago, means people detained by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) must be given access to phones and lawyers in all detention facilities. This measure means to combat the coercive inte...

From media depictions of the criminal legal system, most people seem to understand that when you get arrested, you are allowed a phone call and that phone call can get you a lawyer that will advocate for you during police interrogations. Unfortunately, this is not always the reality – especially in...

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...