Karen Houppert
On March 18, 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in ,Gideon v. Wainwright, that all defendants charged with a crime punishable by imprisonment of more than a year have the constitutional right to free legal counsel if they cannot afford their own. In the fifty years since the ruling, including the years of the national War on Drugs, the number of prosecutions in Americaâ€™s courts has skyrocketed, now totaling approximately 13 million each year. Today, an estimated 80 percent of defendants are served by indigent defense.,Chasing Gideon, by veteran reporter Karen Houppert examines the legacy of this landmark decision, chronicling the cases of defendants across the country who have relied on ,Gideon,â€™s promise. Houppertâ€™s investigation takes her from Washington state, where overextended public defenders juggle impossible caseloads; and New Orleans, where systemic flaws are so pervasive at every level of the criminal justice apparatus that it occasionally nears collapse; to Georgia, where an underfunded capital defense program jeopardizes the efficacy of counsel in death penalty cases; and Florida, where revisiting the original ,Gideon, lawsuit challenges basic assumptions about the right to legal counsel for the poor. These compelling narratives illuminate reform efforts as well as the critical problems that plague indigent defense in the United States, helping us to understand how and why it is failing, and what can be done to better fulfill ,Gideon,â€™s promise.,A half-century after Anthony Lewisâ€™ award-winning ,Gideonâ€™s Trumpet, chronicled the story of the court case that changed the American justice system, ,Chasing Gideon, picks up where Lewisâ€™s book left off, bringing renewed attention to an essential aspect of our criminal justice system and offering keen insight into how we might save it.
Nonfiction,Law,History,Social Movements,Social Justice,Politics,Sociology,Historical
Chasing Gideon: The Elusive Quest for Poor People's Justice