 |  |
| |
Heavy workloads? Low salaries? High turnover of public defenders in Boston's
courts? Howard Babb, Jr., president of the Florida Public Defender
Association says they're common issues confronting Florida's judicial
circuits. Here's a letter Babb recently wrote Governor Jeb Bush in
response to the governor's request that each of Florida's 20 elected Public
Defenders reduce their budgets. Rabb also cites a recent newspaper article
"Lawyer Turnover Causing Big Delays" highlighting how
low salaries for ass't defense lawyers are "tearing up" the system.
| |
|
|  |
|
E. Michael McCann, district attorney for Milwaukee County, Wisconsin outlines how
the cases, the scenes, the legal tactics and strategies in "Real Justice" mirror the
daily challenges in trying to make the
system work.
| |
|
|  |
|
The rough edges of America's urban courts are on stark display in "Real
Justice" say Ronald Sullivan Jr. and Jeffrey Berman, who are with the Public
Defender Service for the District of Columbia. But while impressed with the
series' access and the thought provoking questions raised, they say one aspect
of urban American criminal justice is conspicuously absent.
| |
|
|  |
|
For the uninitiated, says Ronald C. Smith, Chicago law professor and former prosecutor and defense attorney, "Real Justice" reveals enough of the system's underbelly to get you started. But he thinks the "justice factory" in America's large cities is grittier, darker and more chaotic.
| |
|
|  |
|
This view of the system's underside shows clearly, says Michael Johnson, Merrimack County, N.H. DA,
how the criminal justice system has inherited the obligations of America's failed institutions.
| |
