>H Merge Prosecutor and Public Defender

[Delvieron@aol.com]

Transhuman Mailing List

A proposal regarding improving the quality of the US legal system.

    In the United States, we have the concept that since the state is seeking 
to 
impose penalties on people when they put someone on trial, the state has a 
responsibility to make sure that its citizens have adequate council to 
protect their 
rights.  This has in many cases been provided by establishing a public 
defender 
system for those who can not afford council of their own.  However, many 
claim that 
the public defenders are of a lower caliber than a private defender, and 
perhaps more 
importantly, the prosecutors they face.  It is difficult to move an 
electorate to support 
increased funding for defense of those charged with criminal offenses, but it 
is 
possible to get increases in funding for the prosecution of crime.  In 
addition, I would 
argue that it is easier for prosecuting attorneys to break into politics than 
for 
defending attorneys, and that this often means that more ambitious lawyers 
are 
attracted to prosecution much more than public defense, regardless of 
funding.  
Further, police and other law enforcement personel are likely to feel more 
comradery 
with prosecutors than public defenders, and thus may cooperate more with 
prosecutors than public defenders in finding the truth (though this could be 
mostly on 
a subconscious level).  

    What to do about this problem?  I propose that by merging the public 
defenders 
and prosecutors into one, and requiring that state attorneys both prosecute 
and 
defend those accused of crimes, will remove much of the inequity in lawyer 
quality.  
Ideally the new state attorney office would have its lawyers alternate 
between 
defending and prosecuting crimes (my wife pointed out to me, however, that 
they 
would still have to prosecute more since some defendants will have private 
attorneys).  I further propose that the state attorney office be broken into 
at least 
three teams with separate office space (though it could be in the same 
building or 
even on the same floor) which while having the same purpose and resources, 
would 
help to prevent the temptation of sharing too much information with your 
fellows when 
working opposite sides of the same case.  The prosecutor would be drawn from 
one 
team, and the defender from another team (these match-ups would be random) 
for a 
person being charged for the first time.  If a person has been defended by a 
state 
attorney before, then their defender will always be someone from that same 
team 
(though the prosecutor could be from either of the other two teams).  In this 
way, we 
would hopefully limit accidental access by the prosecution to priveleged 
information 
from previous cases.  The reason I propose at least three teams is to limit 
the 
creation of an Us-vs-Them mentality that would likely occur when you have two 
teams always opposed to one another.

    While not perfect, I do believe this system might work better than the 
current 
permanent prosecutor vs public defender system we have now.  The whole idea 
of an 
adversarial legal system is to balance natural biases in the search for the 
truth.  
Hopefully, this idea could restore a balance currently badly off.  A side 
hope I have is 
that by having people work both as defenders and prosecutors will give them a 
more 
balanced perspective, and keep them from becoming entreanched in their 
viewpoint.


Glen Finney
Delvieron@AOL.com

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