NEW YORK HAS long committed itself to insuring that the poor have equal access to justice. Indeed, more than 80 years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1963 decision in Gideon v. Wainwright established an indigent criminal defendant’s federal constitutional right to counsel in felony cases, New York State law recognized that children and indigent adults charged with serious crimes have a right to counsel. In 1881, the Legislature directed courts to appoint private counsel on a pro bono basis for unrepresented defendants responding to an indictment.
Today, New York’s historic commitment is in grave jeopardy. New York fulfills its commitment – and its constitutional obligation – to provide counsel to the poor in significant part through assigned counsel, who are private attorneys assigned to represent children and indigent adults in criminal and family court proceedings in New York. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer attorneys each year continue to be willing to serve as assigned counsel because of the abysmally low rates paid for their work.
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