While the blog is vacationing in Bora-Bora, this is as good a time as any to remind my readership that if you wonder whether public defenders are lawyers, you are not alone. Here’s a post from March 2005:

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So says State Senator Newton, during a public hearing held on January 31, 2005 on the Anti-Death Penalty Bill. The question was posed to Lawrence Adams, a man from Massachusetts, who spent 32 years in prison (roughly 9 of them on death row) before he was exonerated and released. He came to CT to testify against the death penalty. The transcript reads as follows:

SEN. NEWTON: Thank you. I want to thank you for coming to Connecticut to give your testimony. When was it that they found the DNA, after how many years?

LAWRENCE ADAMS: It wasn’t DNA. It was exculpatory evidence. It took 31 years.

SEN. NEWTON: Thirty-one years?

LAWRENCE ADAMS: Yes.

SEN. NEWTON: Did you have a public defender?

LAWRENCE ADAMS: Excuse me?

SEN. NEWTON: Did you have a public defender or a lawyer?

LAWRENCE ADAMS: In the beginning, I had a public defender.

[CHAIRMAN OF THE JUD. COMMITTEE] SEN. MCDONALD: All right. Senator, I really don’t even know how to address that.

SEN. NEWTON: The point I’m trying to get at, and you all laugh, but this is very serious, is that in some cases, it’s been proven that those who can afford attorneys have a better chance. I’m not saying anything bad about public defenders, but in some incidents, you know, cases have been proven.

If you have a high-price lawyer, you stay out of jail. You know, that is the point I was trying to get to, not to disparage anything about our public defenders throughout this country. When you have your own lawyer, it seems that he might be able to collect that evidence, as you said. You know, that was the only point that I was making.

LAWRENCE ADAMS: It has been my experience, right, that I would say that I was unique in the fact that my lawyer, Mr. John Battarac, did work that I don’t think anybody else could have done. I was fortunate to that extent.

SEN. MCDONALD: Thank you very much. I should just note for the record that actually the Chief Public Defender’s Office has probably the greatest breadth of information in history on the defense of capital cases than any other group of attorneys in the state. Are there other questions? Senator Handley followed by Senator Cappiello.

Then the hearing continues.

Amazing, just amazing. Not like we don’t get crap from our clients anyway, now we have a state Senator who doesn’t acknowledge that public defenders are lawyers. Not once did the Senator make the distinction in terms of public defenders as opposed to private attorneys. He kept referring to private attorneys simply as “attorneys”.

In any event, if you have time time, read as much of the transcript as you can – it’s pretty powerful, moving stuff.

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