Why isn't it legally mandated that the budgets for the District Attorney's office must be less than or equal to the budget for the Public Defender's?
I'm sure there are valid reasons and what I'm suggesting may be unrealistic, but it sure seems like it'd nearly guarantee that we're upholding the intent of the Constitution if we did that, eh?
That is pretty much guaranteed to produce a poor allocation of funds. Every case requiring public defender resources will also require district attorney resources, but not every case requiring district attorney resources will require anything from a public defender, because a lot of people have their own lawyers.
I think the defenders should have more. Usually when the DA decides to prosecute, they already have "evidence" Most of their work is done, all they have to do is present said evidence and in most cases win. The defenders tho have to work really hard to counter all and any evidence.
e.g get a ticket from the police? that's evidence that you were speeding. you are paying the fine unless you put in effort to prove you were not.
e.g. get arrested for drugs, guns. those will be seized, the DA will look at the evidence and prosecute. your lawyer, will have to do work to show that those are not yours, or that you were legally able to possess those, or some other way. it seems the public defenders do more work and should have the same amount of budget, if not more.
Yeah, I realized that right after I posted. Seems easy enough to account for though, no?
If 70% (or whatever XX% is) of cases are handled by a Public Defender, then you'd simply require that their funding is, at a minimum, 70% of the DA's funding...
It's not just DA's and public defenders, but judges are involved too, for allowing people to be arraigned and tried without adequate representation. The judges should review cases to determine the adequacy of defense before allowing an arraignment, and that review could be conducted in front of a jury if a case goes to trial.
I'm sure there are valid reasons and what I'm suggesting may be unrealistic, but it sure seems like it'd nearly guarantee that we're upholding the intent of the Constitution if we did that, eh?