The right to an equal and fair trial regardless of wealth is a hallmark of American jurisprudence. To ensure this right, the government pays attorneys to represent financially needy clients. In the U.S. federal court system, indigent defendants are represented by either public defenders who are salaried employees of the court or private attorneys, known as Criminal Justice Act (CJA) attorneys, who are compensated on an hourly basis. This study measures differences in performance of these types of attorneys and explores some potential causes for these differences. Exploiting the use of random case assignment between the two types of attorneys, an analysis of federal criminal case level data from 1997-2001 from 51 districts indicates that public defenders perform significantly better than CJA panel attorneys in terms of lower conviction rates and sentence lengths. An analysis of data from three districts linking attorney experience, wages, law school quality and average caseload suggests that these variables account for over half of the overall difference in performance. These systematic differences in performance disproportionately affect minority and immigrant communities and as such may constitute a civil rights violation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
13187.
Length: Date of creation: Jun 2007 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13187
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Find related papers by JEL classification: H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs K4 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior
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