Murderer attacks defense lawyer in Hennepin County: Civics lessons?

Convicted double-murderer Revelle Loving attacked his defense lawyer during sentencing Tuesday, according to the Star Tribune. The specifics of this particular case weren't discussed in the article, no doubt Loving had a problem with the fact that he was convicted. But it's possible to draw a parallel between this incident, and the larger problem that, with more than 1 in 100 American adults in prison, and public defense budgets being cut drastically, people accused of crimes don't understand their basic rights in court.

I can attest to the overwhelming feeling one can get from the Hennepin County courtrooms. In my capacity as a Daily reporter this year, I covered a number of trials. Apart from a couple minor things, it was the first time I'd spent a substantial amount of time in a courtroom. For those outside the legal professions, the procedures seems unnecessarily bureaucratic, they give a feeling of overwhelming powerlessness. If it feels that way to me, with my multiple degrees and raggedy years of education, imagine how it feels to someone who is locked in one of those boxes, and who perhaps didn't even graduate high school. And even if they did, high school civics didn't prepare us to go to jail--but with prison rates skyrocketing, maybe it should start.


A friend, who is currently in law school, volunteers for the Ramsey County Public Defender's Office. He said that prisoners often mistake him for an enemy. Basically, they don't understand their rights, and that the defender is there for them. The defender is lumped in with the coercive authorities of the police, prosecutors and judges in the criminal justice system. The accused tends to look at all as one big system with the goal of putting him in jail; the public defender becomes another enemy.

There's probably multiple reasons this happens: Public defenders are stretched to breaking point as Minnesota cuts public defenders by 15 percent over the next year. This hampers the time and quality already harried defenders can put into clients' cases.

Also, this system, as many have pointed out before, puts pressure on public defenders to plea bargain to get the case out of the way as soon as possible. The reaction being that clients feel their interests weren't adequately represented, which understandably breeds resentment.

Obviously, the criminal justice system has greater problems than some public defender getting sucker-punched, but implications in peoples' personal lives, and for their freedom, can be potentially huge if they don't understand, or have public defenders to help them understand, what the basic rights are that protect them against the overwhelming power and complexity of the criminal justice system.