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Missouri Failing its Poor Defendants
April 5, 2006
Kansas City Star (Opinion)
Kansas City, MO - - by Richard W. Johnson -- We live in a free and liberated society. The government can’t send the police to rifle through our belongings, shackle us and stick us in prison to live out our lives without good reason.
We could, of course, simply trust our government to decide who should remain free and who should not, but the world’s history of tyranny tells us that such faith is a bad idea. So our founding fathers declared that before we lost our liberty we would be constitutionally entitled to a neutral court and an effective lawyer. If we’re too poor to hire a lawyer, the public will hire a defender for us.
In Missouri, this system for representing the poor is failing.
Richard W. Johnson is a lawyer who lives in Kansas City. |
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