Under the Sixth Amendment, if a person has been charged with a crime and faces potential jail time, then they have the right to have a lawyer to assist in their defense. The right to a lawyer is supposed to be a right everyone has, regardless of their wealth, but those who cannot afford a lawyer have no choice but to rely on their government to provide them with one. Despite the Constitution guaranteeing the right to a lawyer, today’s legislatures and courts routinely neglect their duty to provide everyone with one and deprive those who cannot afford to buy their own lawyer of this right. Our legal system is confusing and difficult to navigate without a lawyer, and when people are forced to do so, it causes harm to all of us. Even navigating only the first court appearance without a lawyer can cause irreparable harm to that person’s case and to society.
At the first court appearance after an arrest, judges make critical decisions about whether the accused person should be released or incarcerated while awaiting trial, inform the accused of their rights, and inform them of the charges against them. Judges do all this in hearings that may last mere seconds and rarely are longer than a few minutes. From the outside, the first appearance may seem disconnected from the outcome of a trial, because “[i]n the folklore of criminal justice a popular belief is that the accused will have his case decided in a trial." But studies have repeatedly shown that not having a lawyer at the first appearance can cause negative case outcomes, on top of increasing someone’s chance of being incarcerated pretrial and destabilizing people’s lives. It’s analogous to having a doctor come in when the cancer is at Stage Three instead of Stage One.
Despite how important the first court appearance is for an accused person, almost half of states do not afford an accused person the right to a lawyer at their initial appearance. However, even in the other half of states that do guarantee a lawyer at the initial appearance, most states have sub-par procedures in place and do little to nothing to ensure this right can be meaningfully exercised. The end result is that people who can afford to buy a lawyer, get one, and those who cannot, are forced to fend for themselves.
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