Yes, the government has the burden to prove a charge beyond a reasonable doubt, but this large disparity in resources can often make that an empty consolation for the accused. For example, when a poor person is arrested, bail they cannot afford is often imposed, forcing them to languish in jail in the absence of any determination of guilt and at a time when they are legally presumed innocent. The result in New York is that more than three out of four inmates at Rikers Island are pretrial detainees.

In 1963, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that, because of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifth and Sixth Amendment right to counsel applied not only to the federal government but also to the states. This decision acknowledged that the U.S. Constitution grants every accused the right to an attorney even if they cannot afford one and gave rise to our nation’s many varied systems of indigent defense. It also gave rise to the special societal role of the public defender.

The public defender is often the only barrier between the government’s tentacles and an accused’s liberty. Here, often the only obstacle between a $4 billion police force and a poor person’s loss of liberty. The indigent defense community is a close-knit one and its bond is mainly an intellectual one. For the Defense is our effort to promote legal scholarship on the intellectual underpinnings of our work. We hope you’ll read with interest and maybe even contribute.