I pulled the $1.5 million figure from http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2013/01/12/aaron-swartz/.
The justice system is required to provide an attorney if you can't get your own. However if you look at http://www.innocenceproject.org/ you'll find that incompetent representation is one of the major causes of innocent people losing these cases. Furthermore in Aaron's case he's being charged under a fairly specialized part of the law, so his odds with a generic defense lawyer against a prosecutor who has specialized in computer crimes would be very poor.
And yes, there is a lot seriously wrong with our system.
Given how the rest of the society works, I'd be not surprised that "incompetent" really means "poorly connected" and that the whole system is just a $1.5 million racket to get a "well connected" lawyer to grease your case.
Re:Linus says Carmen Ortiz is lying
by betterunix on Friday January 18, 2013 @09:04AM
(#5078608)
No, in this case, incompetent means "incompetent." Public defenders are often inexperienced and overworked, and are notorious for advising their clients to accept plea bargains rather than go to trial.
Then you are really are fucked indeed. As an example here (Estonia) state pointed lawyers are choosen from reputable offices only, and they are forced to do that.
The cases the Innocence Project deals with are invariably state cases, the quality of federal public defenders is significantly higher.
I thought that justice system was required to provide an attorney in the case that a defendant didn't have the means by which to procure their own representation? Is your comment only to suggest that a public defender wouldn't be capable of properly defending Aaron and thus he would need to pay for his own lawyer?
If that's the case, then there is really something seriously wrong with our system if the inability to pay a lawyer basically condemns you to being guilty (or pleading) while the rich and defend themselves with teams of the best.