SPRINGFIELD — In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that every person has a constitutional right to free legal representation in criminal cases, including poor people who ...

It was April 2012, long past quitting time, when Orange County Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders found ... inmate “Fernando P.” Also see: Thomas Goethals, veteran judge whose rulings ...

Shannon Wilson, director of the Public Defender of Marion County, said in 2023, PMDC lost 13 attorneys in 11 months after Marion County judges began forcing appointments. Several of these ...

The story incorrectly stated it was Fulton County's Public Defender Office previously. The Source: FOX 5’s Aungelique Proctor talked to several council members or their staffers about the issue.

The last time judges in Marion County tried to force public defenders to take on new clients, more than half of the public defense staff quit and the issue landed at the state’s highest court.

ANNAPOLIS — Robert Sentman has spent his entire nine-year law career prosecuting criminal defendants as a Cecil County State’s Attorney. Denise Winston has represented criminal defendants as ...

A committee will investigate the firings of five chief public defenders who claim the state terminated their employment without just cause — and in violation of their First Amendment right to ...

It was the scandal that Orange County Judge Thomas Goethals didn’t want to ... applied to both the local district attorney and public defender’s offices. The Orange County district attorney ...

Public defenders are county-level officials. But the leader of each office is appointed rather than elected like their counterpart at the State’s Attorney’s Office. In Cook County, the chief ...

Santa Clara County public defender Sajid Khan is running to become the county’s next district attorney. Courtesy Sajid Khan. Sajid Khan, a Santa Clara County deputy public defender and criminal ...