Legal Representation

Weekly Report 09/19/2017 to 09/25/2017

As Kofi Annan once said, “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” Education is a critical factor in achieving progress. For example, the number one method to reducing population growth is providing women with sex education and contraceptive methods. With education comes an awareness of one’s situation, which I believe is lacking in the legal system. As a whole, many people do not know their most basic rights, which can be more detrimental than their actual crimes in some instances, as proven in the case establishing Miranda rights in Miranda v. Arizona (1966). I believe that legal education is crucial in order for citizens to protect themselves from the police and other higher powers’ abuse of their authority, and have begun to consider creating some form of legal education as a final product instead of my initial idea.

Originally, my proposal for a final product was to find a way to provide equal legal representation to lower-income and underprivileged citizens. However, during this past week, I continued to conduct research on the death penalty and court-appointed counsel, and in doing so, found wealth to be a huge factor in determining the duration of a trial. Although pro bono work is honorable, at times it may be insufficient for a defendant. It was my goal to help bridge the gap between pro bono and paid cases in some way. However, by reading more into higher level cases, I have realized that the further down the line a trial is, the less likely it is that one will be provided with effective counsel. It is not uncommon that defendants on death row are left alone if they cannot afford counsel during post conviction appeals, and it seems to be that defendants on death row have very slim chances of being able to attain any form of counsel, have their evidence retried, or have a retrial. Due to the fact that they are on death row, many states assume that a retrial leading to acquittal is unlikely, and that it would be more cost effective to reject these appeals than to carry out the law in its intended fashion.

In learning this information, I have realized how infuriated I have become with this process, and how much more I enjoy constitutional law. Now that I realize that constitutional law is more of where my passion lies, I will update my contact list with State Supreme Court attorneys in order to reach the closest I can to federal law, and begin to research more on the difference between circuit and district courts in order to see if I can include those types of attorneys as well.