Exonerations Change Judicial View on Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

Law evolves more slowly than pop culture or public attitude. Because most exonerations have not resulted in written legal opinions, their impact is slowly seeping into case law. However, courts are influenced by the same news that sways the rest of us. Even without explicitly referring to innocence or wrongful convictions, modern trial courts are undoubtedly more likely to admit expert testimony on the question of eyewitness identification because they are painfully aware of just how easily such witnesses - no matter how honest or passionate - can be wrong. They are certainly more inclined to view confessions suspiciously, especially when it involves the very young, and to consider whether and to what extent police slant evidence. Finally, the fact that innocent people are routinely convicted - despite a full-blown jury trial at which they were represented by defense counsel - suggests that courts should play a more active role in supervising the quality of criminal defense services

Raising the Bar: Standards-Based Training, Supervision, and Evaluation

In this short Article, I sketch the methodology my colleagues and I at Pace Law School use to incorporate practice standards into our clinical teach-ing and reflect on how a standards-based teaching paradigm could be adapted to the training, supervision, and evaluation of public defenders. Then, I briefly consider how standards and standards-based teaching assist in the administration of assigned counsel plans and in the evaluation of the performance of public defender organizations. Although this Article does not cover any of these topics in depth, my goal is to introduce the reader to a standards-based approach to teaching and suggest that lessons from that model might be valuable for public defender office

Private Bar Monitors Public Defense - Oversight Committee Sets Standards for Indigent Defense Providers

The oversight committee drafted standards and guidelines with the primary goal of creating a yardstick for defense services organizations against which to measure performance and the hope that a practical set of standards serve multiple purposes, including: educating a skeptical public about what it takes to provide quality defense services; promoting an understanding of why adequate funding is necessary (to engender public support for more spending); and providing notice to the organizations themselves of what is expected of a publicly funded defense office

Parallels in Predicting Dangerousness - What Price Security

This Panel Discussion was part of a special program presented on April 8, 1999, by Pace University School of Law with Albert Einstein College of Medicine Division of Law and Psychiatry at Pace University School of Law, entitled Playing the Psychiatric Odds: Can We Protect the Public by Predicting Dangerousness

When Justice Fails: Indemnification for Unjust Conviction

The first section of this article reviews the evidence, both historical and contemporary, documenting the existence and frequency of wrongful convictions. The next dissects an actual case to illustrate how an innocent person can be convicted and why, once the error has been corrected and the conviction is vacated, that person generally has no legal action for damages in the absence of indemnification legislation. The third section argues that society has a moral obligation to assist the wrongfully convicted; that indemnification legislation is a better approach than reliance on \u27\u27moral obligation bills; and that enacting legislation is possible - just as it was possible to pass victims\u27 compensation laws in every state. The fourth part compares various indemnification statutes to urge that antiquated restrictions be lifted and that potential awards be increased

Parallels in Predicting Dangerousness--What Price Security?

One question is: why should an employer have any duty to intervene, respond, or warn when an employee is deemed “dangerous”? What expertise in making these predictions can your average business manager bring to the table? As lawyers we tend never to look at law that is more than a week old. Similarly, scientists prefer not to rely on science that is more than a few months old. Yet, here is an article written almost 20 years ago when I was a young Associate for Law at the Hastings Center for a symposium honoring the great forensic psychiatrist Dr. Jonas Robitscher, whom I had the pleasure of working with there