The Right to An Attorney

Throughline

NPR

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.6 • 16.4K Ratings

🗓️ 29 February 2024

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Most of us take it for granted that if we're ever in court and we can't afford a lawyer, the court will provide one for us. And in fact, the right to an attorney is written into the Constitution's sixth amendment. But for most of U.S. history, it was more of a nice-to-have — something you got if you could, but that many people went without.

Today, though, public defenders represent up to 80% of people charged with crimes. So what changed? Today on the show: how public defenders became the backbone of our criminal legal system, and what might need to change for them to truly serve everyone.

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Transcript

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0:16.0	For the conviction of the accused, every weapon is provided and used, even those poisoned by wrong and injustice.
0:32.0	But what machinery is provided for the defense of the innocent?
0:37.0	None. Absolutely none.
0:40.0	It's 1893 and a well-known lawyer named Clara Foltz has traveled halfway across the country all the way from her home in California to give a speech at the
0:55.6	World's Fair in Chicago. Council for the defense is an absolute essential to the just examination of a case.
1:06.0	A trial without it would be little less than a farce.
1:10.0	26 million people would pass through the fair that year.
1:15.0	People flock there to see new inventions, like the Ferris wheel and Cracker Jacks,
1:20.0	and to hear new ideas.
1:22.0	The remedy for many of the evils of the present criminal court practice
1:27.0	lies in the election or appointment of a public defender.
1:32.0	For every public prosecutor, there should be a public defender
1:37.0	chosen in the same way and paid out of the same fund. This speech in 1893 cemented Clarifolds as a pioneer in US legal history, because her proposal was
1:57.9	revolutionary. She was...
2:00.3	One of the first people who came up with this whole idea of the public defender in the United States.
2:06.0	Clara Foltz was actually the first woman to be licensed to practice law in California.
2:16.6	As a woman, it was difficult to get hired at a law firm
2:21.3	or take on paying clients.
2:23.3	And so what she would do was go to the criminal courts
	...

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