Public Defenders vs. Private Court Appointed Attorneys: An Investigation of Indigent Defense Systems

Abstract

To provide essential, constitutionally mandated legal services for defendants without financial means, US courts employ indigent defense systems composed of private court-appointed attorneys and public defenders’ organizations. I investigate the public defender’s causal effect on defendant sentencing outcomes relative to private court-appointed attorneys using a new “twins design” identification strategy. I argue and show empirically that in multiple defendant cases the decision of who is assigned to the public defender organization in jurisdiction X, a large urban locality, can be treated as close to a randomized experiment, which can be utilized to measure the effectiveness of court-appointed private attorneys relative to public defenders. I find that public defenders out-perform court-appointed attorneys in a range of sentencing outcomes. Employing a similar identification strategy in federal courts finds that public defenders perform at least as well if not better then court-appointed attorneys in multiple defendant cases. I provide strong evidence of selection in the assignment of attorney types to defendants in both jurisdiction X and federal courts, which makes a naive comparison invalid and misleading.