The Need for a Public Defenders Office in Harris County

Abstract

The right to counsel is a secured promise embedded in the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This promise ensures that everyone, rich or poor, has an equal standing before the law. The purpose of this paper is to address the need to maintain this secured promise to indigent defendants by providing for effective representation by competent attorneys. The United States leads the world in prison population with 751 people in prison or jail for every 100,000 in population. (If you count only adults, one in 100 Americans is locked up.) The only other major industrialized nation that even comes close is Russia, with 627 prisoners for every 100,000 people. The State of Texas confines more of its citizens to prison than any other state in America. More of those incarcerated in Texas, come from Harris County than any other county in the state. Of the 3,254 offenders who were under sentence of death in the United States as of December 31, 2005, Today about 1000 persons sit on death row in Texas which leads the nation in the number of executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Of the persons on Texas death row, 285 or 28.5% of them were sent there by Harris County courts. This paper determines that indigent defendants in Harris County, Texas, are often inadequately represented through its court-appointed system for indigent defense and suggests the county establish a public defender program in order to meet its constitutional mandate.