Indigent Defendants Research Articles

Unmuted: Solutions to Safeguard Constitutional Rights in Virtual Courtrooms and How Technology Can Expand Access to Counsel and Transparency in the Criminal Justice System

A defendant’s fundamental right to a public trial, and the press and community’s separate right to watch court have been threatened by the shift to virtual hearings. These independent constitutional rights can be in harmony in some cases and clash in others. They cannot be incompatible. Public interest in criminal justice transparency is increasingly crystallized, but courts have often become more opaque, which jeopardizes First and Sixth Amendment rights. This paper addresses the conflict and confronts a key question: how can we be assured that remote and virtual hearings like Zoom arraignments or trials guarantee the same rights as traditional court hearings? Instead of rejecting virtual criminal hearings outright, new proposals are offered for how virtual courtrooms can safeguard constitutional rights. The prevailing belief that criminal defendants should reject virtual trials is questioned. Virtual trials may lead to better outcomes for defendants than traditional trials, specifically during the ongoing pandemic. Beyond preserving rights in a virtual courtroom, the ways technology can improve the criminal justice system are explored. Through an analysis of existing indigent defense and First Amendment scholarship, the myth that traditional court decorum should trump open court and virtual hearings is addressed. Judicial legitimacy and transparency may benefit when criminal cases are accessible on virtual platforms or livestreamed. Transparency can help safeguard defendants’s rights and improve indigent clients’s representation and outcomes. Instead of disrupting the courtroom—whether a hearing is virtual or traditional—convenient public access helps a community learn more about the criminal justice system and evaluate cases, judges, and attorneys. These proposals are practitioner focused and have significant implications for courts and clients by providing a framework for virtual litigation, and leveraging technology for a more equitable criminal justice system. Livestreams and virtual, remote hearings can improve the right of representation for indigent defendants by increasing access to quality counsel, reducing costs, creating a more competitive legal market, and expanding a client’s choice of attorneys.

Different Ways of Losing: Public Defenders (and Private Counsel) at the Supreme Court of Argentina

Though most countries have established public defense systems to represent indigent defendants, this is far from implying their offices are in good shape. Indeed, significant variation likely exists in the systems' effectiveness, across societies and at the subnational level. Defense agencies' performance likely depends on their configuration, including their funding, their internal arrangements, and their selection and retention mechanisms. Centered on public defense in Argentina, this article compares the performance of public and retained counsel at the country's Supreme Court. Public defenders' offices received a boost in the last two decades, and are institutionally well positioned to square off against prosecutors, putting them at least on par with the averaged retained counsel. Using a fresh dataset of around 3000 appeal decisions from 2008 to 2013, the study largely tests representational capabilities by looking at whether counsel meets briefs' formal requirements, a subset of decisions particularly valuable to reduce potential biases. It finds that formal dismissals are significantly less frequent when a public defender is named in an appeal, particularly when a federal defender is involved. It also discusses and tests alternative mechanisms. The article's findings illuminate discussions of support structures for litigation, criminal justice reform, and criminal defendants' rights.

The Right to a Good Defense: Investigating the Influence of Attorney Type Across Urban Counties for Juveniles in Criminal Court

Juvenile defendants in criminal court represent an especially vulnerable group for whom quality legal representation is critical. While some juvenile defendants are able to obtain private counsel, indigent defendants are provided an attorney by the government. One long-standing concern is that these court-appointed attorneys are less effective. Using data on juveniles in criminal court across 37 large, urban counties, the present study examines conviction and sentencing outcomes by comparing private counsel, public defenders, and assigned counsel. Results indicate that defendants with public defenders were less likely to be convicted, less likely to be incarcerated in prison, and served shorter prison sentences compared to defendants with assigned counsel. Contrary to hypotheses, however, the effect of attorney type was not conditioned by court urbanism. The findings suggest that public defenders provide effective legal representation for juveniles in criminal court. Research is needed to determine whether this holds across different contexts (e.g., rural).

Grounded on Newly Discovered Evidence

Though amended several times, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 33 has always provided a period of years to move for a new trial on the basis of “newly discovered evidence,” while requiring that other new trial motions be filed within days after verdict. The circuits disagree, however, as to what kinds of claims can be raised in a “newly discovered evidence” motion, and, assuming that such a motion is not limited to evidence going to the merits of the charges, as to the standard that must be met to obtain relief when the evidence concerns an asserted violation of the defendant’s rights. For example, although the Supreme Court has recognized that the effective assistance of counsel is a crucial safeguard against wrongful conviction, several circuits hold that ineffective-assistance claims cannot be raised in “newly discovered evidence” motions. Another circuit, the Eighth, interprets Rule 33’s “newly discovered evidence” provision to permit no relief on the basis of evidence purportedly demonstrating that the trial judge should have recused herself; it rests that interpretation on the general requirement, applicable where the new evidence concerns the merits of the charges, that the evidence show a likelihood of acquittal at a new trial. For many years, the Seventh Circuit adhered to a uniquely narrow view of the claims cognizable in a “newly discovered evidence” motion. It recently reversed its position on that issue, but seemed to suggest that to obtain relief a defendant generally must show a probability of acquittal at a retrial. This article maintains that Rule 33 should be construed to permit a defendant to move for a new trial, on the basis of evidence purportedly demonstrating a violation of his or her constitutional rights, if the evidence is newly obtained and could not have been obtained earlier through due diligence, and to obtain relief without having to show a likelihood of acquittal at a new trial. The article argues that a broad approach to cognizability is supported by the text and original understanding of the Rule, the fundamental nature of nearly all constitutional rights that might be the basis for a new trial motion resting on newly obtained evidence, and by the limitations on pretrial discovery in criminal cases. The article further argues that the finality and other considerations relied on in decisions refusing to entertain ineffective-assistance claims do not justify forcing a defendant to litigate such claims in a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. A motion under that statute is not heard until after sentencing and appeal; it may have to be litigated by an indigent defendant without counsel; and its denial is not appealable as of right. As to the standard a defendant should have to meet to obtain a new trial, the article notes that requiring a showing of a likelihood of acquittal at a retrial conflicts with the Supreme Court’s decisions involving prosecutorial suppression of exculpatory evidence, which do not demand such a showing. Requiring a showing of a likelihood of acquittal is also unsound in principle, as newly unearthed evidence may show a trial was unfair, without indicating what the result might be without the unfairness.

A Functional Approach to Municipal Policymaker Determinations in Section 1983

Debtors’ prisons are alive and well in America despite being deemed unconstitutional. Indigent defendants often find themselves caught in a cycle of unconstitutional bail, fines, and fees that ultimately may land them in jail with no consideration of their indigence. These indigent defendants have a route to relief through Section 1983 which provides a federal forum for those plaintiffs deprived of federally protected rights by state actors. Unfortunately, awards of money damages, while possible, are often out of reach. The primary problem this paper addresses concerns municipal policymaker determinations. In short, the plaintiff may pursue money damages against a municipality, but he often must show that the action which deprived him of his constitutional right was made by a municipal policymaker. The issue is that the indigent defendant is jailed through a judicial order. This means he would need to show the municipal judge acted as a municipal policymaker in order for the municipality to be liable. In making policymaker determinations, courts look to state law. If the applicable state law defines a municipal judge as part of the state judiciary, then the judge cannot be a municipal policymaker. This formulaic determination often prevents the indigent plaintiff from connecting the unconstitutional judicial order to the municipality, which in turn prevents the plaintiff from receiving money damages from the city. While at first glance this may seem like a fair disconnect in order to protect the independence of the local judiciary, the reality is that it may ignore the way in which some municipalities actually operate. To explain, local judges are often hired and fired by the city, and recent cases reveal the pressure that some cities put on judges to fund their own courts through fine and fee imposition. With this in mind, municipal judges may actually come to set municipal policy, and policymaker determinations should reflect that. This paper proposes a solution — a functional approach to policymaker determinations. Instead of simply relying on statutory definitions of judges, courts should look to the actual functions the judge is performing. If the judge is acting under the municipality’s authority and subject to the municipality’s influence, then in consideration of the judge’s actual function within the municipality, he should be considered a policymaker for the locality. With this functional approach, plaintiffs would be able to pursue money damages and connect the unconstitutional judicial orders to the responsible municipality.

Regulating Mass Prosecution

Efforts to address our nation’s criminal justice crisis have hit a standstill; legislative solutions have proven inadequate and increased funding for public defenders is politically impractical. Virtually everyone agrees that there is a problem: we incarcerate more people than any other developed nation and that imposes a significant cost on society. The conventional solutions to this crisis focus on the legislative or public defense side of the equation – urging decriminalization of certain behaviors by state legislatures and increased funding for indigent defenders. These proposed solutions are important but, alone, insufficient, for reasons that are all too predictable: a lack of political will to do right by indigent defendants. In this paper, I advance a solution that is at the same time novel and achievable. My proposed solution is novel because it focuses on an institutional actor that has, to this point, received comparatively little attention in the debates over mass incarceration – the prosecutor. It is achievable because it does not require new legislation that would, in turn, depend upon political support that is unlikely to materialize. Instead, the solution is already a part of our legal backdrop: prosecutors should be required to comply with the same ethical rules that govern all other lawyers. And those rules, I argue, are violated when prosecutors exercise their charging discretion in ways that contribute to massive public defender caseloads. Prosecutorial discretion allows the prosecutor, with few limitations, to choose which of many potential criminal charges she will pursue. This means that prosecutorial discretion gives prosecutors a degree of control over the size and scope of the criminal court docket that other criminal court actors do not possess. If we seek a solution to our nation’s problem of mass incarceration, then we must recognize that public defenders with massive caseloads compromise that goal. This Article conveys that public defender overload, and the mass incarceration to which it contributes, is not simply a constitutional crisis limited to individual rights for individual defendants. Instead, it defines the problem as an ethical one, with central concerns about how the legal profession is situated in the criminal justice domain.

When courts refuse to play by the rules (of law): the failure of public administration theory in securing constitutional rights

If there is any area of government in which one would expect to locate the rule of law, it would be in the courts. And, if there is any group of people deserving the protections of the rule of law, it would be the accused unable to afford an attorney. In the United States of America, the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution provides a right to assistance of counsel, and both Supreme Court precedent and federal statute extend that right to indigent defendants in criminal cases while establishing that the representation provided is at least minimally effective. However, while these rights exist on paper, their protection has gone wanting in practice as the competing goals of federal judicial administration have starved indigent defense of sufficient funding and have failed to ensure that the attorneys and representation provided are adequate. Indeed, as federal judicial administration has become more ‘professionally’ focused – deferring to the administrative expertise of staff members and emphasizing cost-effective, results-oriented management – indigent criminal defendants have seen the adequacy of their representation fall, in turn threatening the rule of law. This paper tells that story by simultaneously explaining the growth of judicial administration at the federal level in the United States and showing how the federal courts’ increased focus on bureaucratic processes and staff expertise in cost containment have endangered the most vulnerable parties in the federal criminal cases. As such, the federal courts’ over-reliance on public administration theory and their failure to balance its implementation with other central goals threatens the rule of law in their very courtrooms. There is a way out of this morass, which a committee of the federal courts has even recommended: independence of the defense function from the courts’ administrative structures. Barring that change, a central constitutionally-protected right will remain at risk.

The Lemons Problem in Criminal Appeals: On the Pernicious Effects of Douglas v. California

Douglas v. California holds that states that provide an appeal as a matter of right from a criminal conviction must provide appellate counsel to indigent defendants wishing to appeal. States don’t have to provide a right of appeal at all, but if they do they have to give indigent defendants a free lawyer. Combined with earlier cases, Douglas provides defendants a free option to appeal. Combined with counsel whose ideological commitments may cause them to raise some issue — any issue — that has the slightest chance of success, Douglas has created a pool of criminal appeals that judges tend to view with a deservedly skeptical eye. The free option it creates makes it hard for defendants with solid appellate claims to distinguish themselves from the large fraction of appeals raising unsound claims. The situation is partly analogous to the well-known “lemons” problem in economics. The rule against contingent criminal representation is flawed on its own terms, but it also forecloses the most rational solution to the lemons problem in criminal appeals. The rule against contingent criminal representation should be repealed. Appellate defense counsel should be paid a market hourly wage to review a file, but any actual merits briefing and argument should be done on a contingent fee basis, with the risk-adjusted fee award paid by the government.

Strengthening the Role of Defence at the International Criminal Court: Reflections on How Defence is and Can Be Supported for Greater Effectiveness and Efficiencies

Noting the absence of institutional status for defence in the structure of the International Criminal Court, the present article discusses the means by which the work of defence is supported for enhanced effectiveness and efficiency in proceedings. The article surveys the regime of legal assistance available to indigent defendants, the privileges and immunities granted to defence as well as the cooperation framework, and the support provided by the Registry of the Court and the Office of Public Counsel for the defence. The article then examines how defence can itself contribute to greater effectiveness and efficiency in the Court’s proceedings and activities, with a particular focus on the establishment of the International Criminal Court Bar Association and the involvement of defence in the amendment procedures to the Court’s texts.

What Difference Does a Lawyer Make? Impacts of Early Counsel on Misdemeanor Bail Decisions and Outcomes in Rural and Small Town Courts

Recent court decisions and state legislation have highlighted the significance of ensuring that criminal defendants are represented by counsel at their first appearances in court, where judges make critical decisions on pretrial release, bail, and detention. Yet many jurisdictions do not routinely provide counsel to indigent defendants at this stage. We hypothesize that when defendants are represented by counsel at first appearance (CAFA), they are more likely to be released on recognizance, are less likely to have high bail set, and are consequently less likely to be jailed pending disposition. We explore the impact of lawyers’ presence by comparing pretrial decisions and bail outcomes across samples of misdemeanor cases in three rural counties in upstate New York: cases with and without CAFA. We find that these counties saw shifts in decisions or outcomes. We consider the implications of these findings for future research, court practices, and public policy.

Right to Counsel in Misdemeanor Prosecutions After Alabama v. Shelton: No-Lawyer-Courts and Their Consequences on the Poor and Communities of Color in St. Louis

Under U.S. Supreme Court cases Argersinger v. Hamlin and Alabama v. Shelton, the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires the provision of defense counsel to an indigent defendant for any charge that, if proved, actually leads to imprisonment or is punished by a suspended sentence that subsequently could lead to imprisonment. This article uses St. Louis as a case study to demonstrate that unconstitutional criminal procedures and underfunded public defender’s offices create no-lawyer-courts—courts that unconstitutionally allow defendants to go unrepresented. In a period of observation spanning 2014-2016, we found that St. Louis courts violated the right to counsel in misdemeanor prosecutions through lengthy confinements and exorbitant bonds, abusive plea bargaining practices, invalid waivers, and unconstitutional sentences. Drawing from court observations and electronic data, this study highlights how constitutional doctrine’s grant of procedural discretion to lower courts imposes injustice on poor and minority communities in practice.

Forensic Experts, Indigent Defendants, and the Constitution.

Over 30 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court held that indigent defendants raising psychiatric issues are entitled to the assistance of a mental health expert. However, the exact dimensions of that assistance, and whether the expert must be assigned exclusively to assist the defense, have been in contention ever since. In its recent decision in McWilliams v. Dunn, the Court underscored that the state-funded expert must be available to consult with the defense, not merely to evaluate the defendant, but declined to opine on whether the defense is entitled to its own expert for the purpose.

Testimony Before the U.S. Sentencing Commission on the Tribal Law and Order Act

Under longstanding policy, the U.S. Sentencing Commission takes the position that tribal court convictions ought not be counted for purposes of evaluating a convicted defendant's criminal history. Because in some cases this policy underestimates a defendant's criminal history, it undermines the utilitarian and retributive purposes of federal sentencing. The Tribal Law and Order Act, currently pending in Congress and supported by the President, should cause the United States Sentencing Commission to reconsider its position on tribal convictions. The Act would provide clear federal authorization for tribal court felony sentences of up to three years per offense as long as tribal governments provide counsel to indigent defendants. I stop short of recommending a particular outcome because I believe that the Commission ought to consider the views of tribal governments before deciding. However, if the Act becomes law, the Commission should take this opportunity to re-open the question and consult with tribes about the future of this provision.

Federal Review of State Criminal Convictions: A Structural Approach to Adequacy Doctrine

Modern state postconviction review systems feature procedural labyrinths so complicated and confusing that indigent defendants have no realistic prospect of complying with the rules. When defendants predictably fail to navigate these mazes, state and federal courts deem their claims procedurally defaulted and refuse to consider those claims on their merits. As a result, systemic violations of criminal procedure rights—like the right to effective counsel—persist without judicial correction. But the law contains a tool that, if properly adapted, could bring these systemic problems to the attention of federal courts: procedural adequacy. Procedural adequacy doctrine gives federal courts the power to ignore procedural defaults and declare state procedural rules inadequate when those rules unduly burden defendants’ abilities to assert violations of their federal rights. And unlike the more commonly invoked cause and prejudice doctrine, which excuses default on the theory that a defendant’s unusual circumstances justify an exception to the rules, procedural adequacy doctrine allows courts to question the legitimacy of the state procedural regimes themselves. Procedural adequacy doctrine can therefore catalyze reform in a way that cause and prejudice cannot. For procedural adequacy litigation to catalyze reform, however, it must be adapted to modern circumstances in one crucial respect. Historically, procedural adequacy doctrine focused on cases involving the deliberate manipulation of individual rules. Today, what is needed is a structural approach to adequacy, one that would consider how the interaction of multiple procedural rules unfairly burdens federal rights. Such a structural approach to adequacy is consistent with the doctrine’s original purposes and is the most sensible way to apply procedural adequacy under current conditions. Litigants should accordingly deploy a structural approach to procedural adequacy doctrine and use it to stop states from burying systemic constitutional violations in complicated procedural labyrinths.

The causal impact of bail on case outcomes for indigent defendants in New York City

The causal impact of bail on case outcomes for indigent defendants in New York City

Bail Nullification

This Article explores the possibility of community nullification beyond the jury by analyzing the growing and unstudied phenomenon of community bail funds, which post bail for strangers based on broader beliefs regarding the overuse of pretrial detention. When a community bail fund posts bail, it can serve the function of nullifying a judge’s determination that a certain amount of the defendant’s personal or family money was necessary to ensure public safety and prevent flight. This growing practice—what this Article calls “bail nullification”—is powerful because it exposes publicly what many within the system already know to be true: that although bail is ostensibly a regulatory pretrial procedure, for indigent defendants it often serves the function that a real trial might, producing guilty pleas and longer sentences when an individual cannot afford to pay their bail. By examining the ways in which community bail funds serve the functions that a nullifying jury might—allowing popular participation in an individual case to facilitate larger resistance to the policies and practices of state actors—this Article argues that community bail funds have the potential to change how local criminal justice systems operate on the ground, shifting and shaping political and constitutional understandings of the institution of money bail. Community bail funds give a voice to populations who rarely have a say in how criminal justice is administered, especially poor people of color. And the study of bail funds helps point toward other ways in which bottom-up public participation can help create a criminal justice system that is truly responsive to the communities that it is ultimately supposed to serve.

The Structural Function of the Sixth Amendment Right to Counsel of Choice

The “root meaning” of the Sixth Amendment’s Counsel Clause is the right to retain counsel of one’s choice. Yet until just last Term, no criminal defendant had ever persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a conviction on counsel-of-choice grounds; many had tried in vain. I consider in this paper whether there is any satisfying, functional account that can explain the disjuncture between what the Court says about the right and what it does when presented with an asserted violation of that right. The leading theories justify the right to counsel of choice either as securing the effective assistance of counsel, and thus a fair trial, or as a facet of the defendant’s prerogative to control his own defense. These theories, however — grounded in majestic-sounding notions of fairness and autonomy, respectively — struggle to explain counsel-of-choice doctrine. For one thing, indigent defendants simply have no right to choose their counsel at all. And while criminal procedure rights are seldom absolute, balancing the defendant’s fairness and autonomy interests against the government’s countervailing needs cannot explain the pattern of Court decisions in anything but the most ad hoc manner. My claim is that something very different explains the Court’s counsel-of-choice decisions. The right to counsel of choice functions not as a powerful individual entitlement, but rather as a weak, system-level safeguard against socialization of the criminal defense bar. I use “socialization” here in the political and not the social psychological sense, to refer to “the action or process of bringing” an institution “under state ownership or public control.” Only when the government advances a theory for restraining defendant choice that, if accepted, would allow it to strangle the private defense bar and socialize criminal defense does this anti-socialization principle require that the right to counsel of choice prevail. This means that even a weak government interest — like a judge’s desire to push a case to trial quickly — can overcome the right as long as that interest is meaningfully bounded in its reach across the criminal docket.

"Infinity Goes up on Trial": Sanism, Pretextuality, and the Representation of Defendants with Mental Disabilities

<p><em>I begin by sharing a bit about my past. Before I became a professor, I spent 13 years as a lawyer representing persons with mental disabilities, including three years in which my focus was primarily on such individuals charged with crime. In this role, when I was Deputy Public Defender in Mercer County (Trenton) NJ, I represented several hundred individuals at the maximum security hospital for the criminally insane in New Jersey, both in individual cases, and in a class action that implemented the then-recent US Supreme Court case of Jackson v Indiana, that had declared unconstitutional state policy that allowed for the indefinite commitment of pre-trial detainees in maximum security forensic facilities if it were unlikely he would regain his capacity to stand trial in the ‘foreseeable future.’</em></p><p><em>I continued to represent this population for a decade in my later positions as Director of the NJ Division of Mental Health Advocacy and Special Counsel to the NJ Public Advocate. Also, as a Public Defender, I represented at trial many defendants who were incompetent to stand trial, and others who, although competent, pled not guilty by reason of insanity. Finally, during the time that I directed the Federal Litigation Clinic at New York Law School, I filed a brief on behalf of appellant in Ake v Oklahoma, on the right of an indigent defendant to an independent psychiatrist to aid in the presentation of an insanity defence. I have appeared in courts at every level from police court to the US Supreme Court, in the latter ‘second-seating’ Strickland v Washington. I raise all this not to offer a short form of my biography, but to underscore that this article draws on my experiences of years in trial courts and appellate courts as well as from decades of teaching and of writing books and articles about the relationship between mental disability and the criminal trial process. And it was those experiences that have formed my opinions and my thoughts about how society’s views of mental disability have poisoned the criminal justice system, all leading directly to this paper, that will mostly be about what I call ‘sanism’ and what I call ‘pretextuality’. The paper will also consider how these factors drive the behaviour of judges, jurors, prosecutors, witnesses, and defence lawyers, whenever a person with a mental disability is charged with crime, and about a potential remedy that might help eradicate this poison.</em></p><p><em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It is essential that lawyers representing criminal defendants with mental disabilities understand the meanings and contexts of sanism </span><span style="font-size: medium;">and </span><span style="font-size: medium;">pretextuality </span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;">and to show how these two factors infect all aspects of the criminal process, and offer some thoughts as to how they may be remediated. </span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;">I believe – and I have been doing this work for over 40 years – that an understanding of these two factors is absolutely essential to any understanding of how our criminal justice system works in the context of this population, and how it is essential that criminal defence lawyers be in the front lines of those seeking to eradicate the contamination of these poisons from our system.</span></em></p><p><em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></em></p><p><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;">*Please note this is an invited paper - ie. not peer reviewed*</span><em><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></em></p><p> </p>

Improving the Efficacy of Administrative Data for Evaluation of Holistic Defense

ABSTRACTA college of social work developed a partnership with a state commission on indigent defense to examine existing data-collection procedures, potential case outcomes, and practical implications of implementing holistic defense programs. The holistic defense model responds to the complex challenges of justice-system-involved defendants by providing social services in public defense offices. Using chi-square and logistic regression analyses of administrative data for a sample of 15,994 public defendants from a single judicial circuit, this research study examined case outcomes before and after implementation of a holistic defense program. Results were mixed regarding effectiveness of holistic defense in mitigating the effect of justice involvement for indigent defendants. Implementation of holistic defense was associated with a decrease in case dismissals. However, defendants receiving holistic representation were less likely to be indicted than defendants prior to program implementation. Once indicted, there were no changes in levels of diversions, and more defendants were held on bond, convicted as guilty, and incarcerated. After program implementation, fewer defendants were sentenced to alternatives to incarceration; more defendants were sentenced to time served, avoiding further incarcerative penalty. These findings suggested the need for further research to determine whether holistic defense practices are producing desired legal and social service outcomes.

Commonwealth V. Holmes and the Rule of Deferral: Short Sentences, Long Sentences and the Illusory Nature of the Good Cause Exception

Commonwealth V. Holmes and the Rule of Deferral: Short Sentences, Long Sentences and the Illusory Nature of the Good Cause Exception