Lancaster County
Public Defender
Public Defender
lancaster.ne.gov
Article I, Section 3 of
The Constitution of the State of Nebraska
as amended by a vote of the people
November, 1998.
| The 1999 Annual Report of the Lancaster County Public Defender |
|---|
Dennis R. Keefe, Public Defender
After more than 27 years as a public defender, I sometimes have to remind myself why people in
our profession do what we do. It certainly isn't for the money. It also isn't for public acclaim.
Many members of the public do not understand what it is that we do, and some who think they
understand see us as simple extensions of our clients. Yet, recently I have sensed a new breeze
beginning to blow through the public's perception of the criminal justice system, including the
function of the defense attorney.
In the spring of 1999, I was invited to speak to a community service organization following one of their monthly dinner meetings. The invitation itself was not unusual. I am often asked to try to explain to citizens groups why they should be happy that their tax dollars are going to pay attorneys to represent individuals charged with crimes. Needless to say, this is often a rather daunting task. I always prepare myself for the inevitable question following my presentation, "How can you sleep at night knowing that you represent guilty people?"
However, this invitation was somewhat unusual because of the subject matter that I was asked to discuss. I was being requested to not only discuss the general duties of the public defender, but to talk about the importance of those duties in light of the emerging problem of so many wrongful convictions that were being discovered around the country.
The individual who extended the invitation had apparently been paying close attention to recent national news stories from several areas of the country dealing with the "mistakes" of innocent people being convicted by the criminal justice system. He talked about the fact that more people on death row in Illinois had been released when it was shown that they were innocent than had been executed. He talked about a series of articles in a national newspaper dealing with innocent people being convicted of murder through a manipulation of evidence by police and prosecutors. And he talked about a specific case which had been highlighted on a recent television news program where the individual (eventually freed because DNA evidence proved his innocence) had been convicted of murder based upon perjury by a police officer.
At first, I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. The organization that I was invited to speak to was a fairly conservative business-oriented service group. My apparent task was to discuss the role of the public defender in the context of representing innocent people who were being unfairly railroaded by an unjust system. It appeared that little was needed in terms of public education.
In my preparation for this public speaking engagement, I began to think about all of the reasons that those of us who do public defender work enjoy it. One of the obvious reasons is that it is very important, even if unpopular, work. Nowhere is this more apparent than in those situations where innocent people have been charged or convicted. In such situations it is easy for us to justify, and for the public to understand, the need for the right to counsel.
Much of the recent dramatic increase in the discovery of innocent people who were convicted of crimes they did not commit, is due to new and improved technology, particularly DNA testing. These type of incidents are good public education tools. They make it easy to explain why we need to bend over backwards to insure fairness in our justice system. It is worth remembering that, in this educational effort, we are counteracting years of demagoguery by unprincipled politicians (many of them lawyers). Much of the unfairness that permeates our current system of justice nationally and is evidenced by the discovery of innocent people having been convicted, stems from the substitution of thoughtless political rhetoric for sound criminal justice policy.
One thought kept recurring as I prepared for my meeting - we cannot allow the public debate to be restricted to a discussion of only "the innocent convicted." In a truly fair system of justice, it cannot be just the "obviously innocent" who should be provided with the effective assistance of counsel, but all those who are accused by their government. After all, in the recent cases dealing with innocent people who were convicted, the general public (and a jury) was led to believe by prosecutors and the media that the innocents were guilty.
If we limit the right to counsel only to those who are "obviously" innocent, we would certainly miss cases involving actually innocent people. What government agency or person is going to determine which individuals are innocent and deserving of counsel and which are so obviously guilty that the due process protections need not apply? As we enter a new century for this experiment in a democratic republic, it is more than a little interesting that we are still dealing with such fundamental issues of how to provide fairness in our system of justice.
In its 28th year of existence, the Lancaster County Public Defender's Office experienced a number of changes in staff. We saw two attorneys leave, and two attorneys take their place and the addition of another felony attorney position. The Public Defender's Office has grown into a moderate size office in the past few years. One thing that hasn't changed, however, is the dedication of the staff to the principle of equal justice.
Dennis R. Keefe
| Overview of Indigent Defense system Public Defender's Office Key Issues for 2000 and BeyondAppendix |