This blog has been sometime in gestation and I have
had to think about it carefully as one thing that I want to achieve in this
blog is not to offend any of my readers. So here goes my voyage into
controversy.

The particular article that caught my attention was
the sentencing to death of a young man for a drive by shooting. The
circumstances were somewhat dubious, but that is not the point. Most people
facing trial in Alabama are poor and cannot afford legal representation but are
allocated a lawyer by the state. The problem is that this does not necessarily
mean a trial lawyer, in the case of the defendant he was allocated a tax
lawyer, yes a tax lawyer for somebody facing a complex capital trial. Now there
are many other disturbing aspects of this particular but these are not
pertinent to our argument, the tax lawyer simply had neither the experience nor
knowledge to represent a client facing in Alabama the electric chair.
The second strand comes from a solicitor friend of
mine with whom I discussed Legal Aid. There are huge changes afoot, so not only
will the qualifying threshold for Legal Aid be extremely low, but also the
quality of the lawyer allocated to you may not be what you would have chosen.
In North Yorkshire there will be a small number (four I think), of legal firms
contracted to offer legal aid. Of course they will be contracted on the basis
of cost rather than quality and certainly not local knowledge. It will also be
provided by the usual cast of out-source “partners”. So effectively a low cost
legal factory rather than a skilled practitioner will represent you.
So whereas we tend to look rather condescendingly at
the type of justice that is being delivered in Alabama, we should be very, very
careful. It would appear that if you are in trouble with law, it may either
cost you a lot of money, or the quality of representation that you receive may
not be appropriate. As a “civilised” country how we treat the poorest and most
desperate is a mark of us as a nation. Other countries should be seeing England
as an exemplar, not as a leader in the race to the bottom.
I think you should not be worrying about offending readers. Offering insightful commentary on issues of justice should lead to good dialogue and ultimately good problem solving.
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