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Mississippi Says Poor Defendants Must Always Have a Lawyer. Few Courts Are Ready to Deliver. (www.propublica.org)

submitted 1 year ago by socphoenix@midwest.social to c/usnews

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[–] soiling 5 points 1 year ago

that isn't what this is referring to. Mississippi has public defenders, but public defenders are horrifically overworked and spend extremely little time with their clients. in Mississippi, it's worse than in most states. from the article:

After someone is arrested for a felony in Mississippi, that person has an initial appearance in court. A judge informs the defendant of the charges against them, sets the conditions for being released from jail, and appoints a lawyer if the defendant can’t afford one. Under current rules, in many courts that lawyer handles just the initial appearance and, in some cases, an optional preliminary hearing when evidence is presented. After that, the lawyer exits the case.

Only after the defendant is indicted, which often takes months, is another lawyer appointed. Critics have dubbed the period between lawyers the “dead zone.”

Mississippi gives district attorneys unlimited time to indict someone after an arrest, and it’s among a handful of states where defendants can be jailed indefinitely as they await indictment, according to recent research by Pam Metzger, a legal scholar who runs the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law.

the change now is that defendants are supposed to have access to an attorney in the "dead zone".