makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Yes it’s worth it. Even the worst, most overworked public defender has spent years of their life in school, deals with a system you’ve likely never interacted with on a daily basis, and usually has some level of altruism. The reason you hear about people who win by representing themselves is because it’s very rare for them to not get trampled by the system
snooggums@piefed.world 1 week ago
The biggest reason that a public defenders struggle sometimes is because they have more limited time and resources compared to private defenders who can generally scale effort with the amount of money thrown at them. That is mainly an issue with society’s priorities, since we throw far more money at prosecutors.
SpikesOtherDog@ani.social 1 week ago
I was privvy to info about prosecutors vs public defenders. It may not be true in every region, but it is at least in my town.
Prosecutors actually get less money to handle cases, but get to push off or decline to prosecute depending on severity and caseload.
Public defenders get more funding from many different levels of government, but even with that funding they are overworked with twice the staff.
I think prosecutors already have the case presented to them as well, and they are pressing charges. Defenders need to pick up where the police and prosecutors left off and either find a legal out or bargain with what the defendant has to get the best position.
Also, from what I have heard about pro se defendants is that it frustrates the court because the proceedings grind to a crawl to ensure the defendant understands enough of what is going on to not have them claim they were railroaded.