The term public defender is primarily used to refer to a lawyer appointed to represent people who cannot afford to hire an attorney in the United States and Brazil. It is also a literal translation of the Spanish-language term defensor del pueblo, which usually refers to an ombudsman office, and is the English-language title of the Jamaican ombudsman.
Brazil is the only country where an office of government-paid lawyers, with the specific purpose of providing legal assistance and representation to the destitute, free of charge, is established in the Constitution, although the 1963 US Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights requires the government to provide free legal counsel to indigent defendants in criminal cases.
Read more about Public Defender: By Country, Miscellaneous
Famous quotes containing the word public:
“Hast ever ben in Omaha
Where rolls the dark Missouri down,
Where four strong horses scarce can draw
An empty wagon through the town?
Where sand is blown from every mound
To fill your eyes and ears and throat;
Where all the steamboats are aground,
And all the houses are afloat?...
If not, take heed to what I say,
You’ll find it just as I have found it;
And if it lies upon your way
For God’s sake, reader, go around it!”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)