This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, March 31st, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

In the case of Louis V. Gonzalez, the right to secure your own counsel with your own money

was pitted against the needs of those who may be

due restitution post-conviction.

The Supreme Court found in favor of the right to counsel, but as often happens, the agreements

didn't line up with expected ideology.

Cato's Trevor Burris comments.

The case of Louise v. United States is about

the extent to which the government can freeze assets as it relates to your ability to retain

counsel and defend yourself in court.

So we talked about this before we started recording and I got the sense from you that these things,

one of them is sort of tacked on to the other in a way?

One of the assets are tacked on to the other or that the issues are conflated.

Yes and to some extent the you could call this a right to counsel case which it is but it hasn't the sixth

amendment right to counsel but it hasn't really changed our vision of the right to

counsel that still is what it means to have effective representation of counsel.

It hasn't really changed that.

It just has adjusted how much the government can take money from people or

freeze money from people if it compromises their ability to hire an attorney of their choice, which is an old term.

You at least have a right to hire an attorney of your choice.

So in this case, this woman who had been indicted on Medicare fraud, accused of stealing $45 million in Medicare fraud.

...