The Right to Effective Counsel at Your Trial

The Sixth Amendment is supposed to guarantee the right to a fair trial—including a lawyer, even if the defendant can’t afford one. But Indigent Defense is woefully underfunded and, sometimes, State-appointed lawyers are nowhere near as competent as Federal attorneys. A new Supreme Court ruling makes it more difficult to use exonerating evidence discovered on a federal level to prove innocence, even if state counsel didn’t look for it.

Guest: Leah Litman, law professor at University of Michigan, specializing in constitutional law and federal courts, and co-host of the podcast Strict Scrutiny

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