[Download] "Public Defender Elections and Popular Control over Criminal Justice. (Broke and Broken: Can We Fix Our State Indigent Defense System?)" by Missouri Law Review # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free

📘 Read Now     📥 Download

eBook details

• Title: Public Defender Elections and Popular Control over Criminal Justice. (Broke and Broken: Can We Fix Our State Indigent Defense System?)
• Author : Missouri Law Review
• Release Date : January 22, 2010
• Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 342 KB

Description

Voters in the United States select some of the major actors in criminal justice, but not all of them. Among the major figures in the criminal courtroom, voters typically elect two of the three: the prosecutor and the judge, but not the public defender. Prosecutors in almost all states are elected at the local level. Judicial elections offer more of a mixed bag, but a strong majority of jurisdictions elect their judges in some form or other. Unlike prosecutors and most judges, however, the public defender is typically not an elected official, even though the defender is a public employee with important budgetary and policymaking authority over criminal justice. Why the difference? Do we believe that voters would behave markedly differently when electing public defenders? Or do we believe that public defenders themselves would respond to voter input in less desirable ways than other criminal justice officials? As it happens, we have some actual experience to draw upon in answering these questions because a few jurisdictions actually do elect their public defenders. Florida, Tennessee, and a few places in California and Nebraska elect their chief public defenders at the local level, and have done so for decades. (1) Part I of this Article reviews the existing evidence about the election of criminal justice officials and presents new evidence about the campaigns and outcomes in public defender elections. Voters respond to candidates for the public defender's office much in the same way that they react to candidates for the prosecutor's office: they choose the incumbent, even more often than they do for legislators and chief executives. (2) The candidates themselves also behave fairly similarly in public defender and prosecutor election campaigns. Both the prosecutor and the defender candidates spend a disappointing amount of time in their campaign speeches discussing the actions of attorneys in particular cases.

PDF Ebook Download "Public Defender Elections and Popular Control over Criminal Justice. (Broke and Broken: Can We Fix Our State Indigent Defense System?)" Online ePub Kindle