WASHINGTON—Courts routinely violate the constitutional rights of millions of Americans by discouraging or denying the right to a lawyer when criminally accused of a misdemeanor. The consequences can be lifelong and ruinous, yet most people are unaware of the problem.
On May 13, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, convened a hearing on “Protecting the Constitutional Right to Counsel for Indigents Charged with Misdemeanors,” and invited several constitutional scholars to testify. Grassley said he believed it was the first time the Committee had ever held a hearing on the subject.
The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall … have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”
“Many states are not providing counsel as the Constitution requires,” said Chairman Grassley. “The Supreme Court’s Sixth Amendment decisions are violated thousands of times every day. No Supreme Court decisions have been violated so widely, so frequently, and for so long,” he said.
Professor Robert Boruchowitz, director of The Defender Initiative at the Seattle University School of Law, said, “In Kentucky, only 32 percent of misdemeanor defendants have a public defender. In Texas, 25.4 percent of the misdemeanor defendants appear without counsel.”
