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A public defender is a
lawyer A lawyer is a person who practices law. The role of a lawyer varies greatly across different legal jurisdictions. A lawyer can be classified as an advocate, attorney, barrister, canon lawyer, civil law notary, counsel, counselor, solicit ...
appointed to represent people who otherwise cannot reasonably afford to hire a lawyer to defend themselves in a trial. Several countries provide people with public defenders, including the UK, Hungary and Singapore, and some states of Australia. Brazil is the only country in which an office of government-paid lawyers with the specific purpose of providing full legal assistance and representation to the needy free of charge is established in the
constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these pr ...
. The Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution, as interpreted by the
Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
, requires the US government to provide legal counsel to indigent defendants in criminal cases. Public defenders in the United States are lawyers employed by or under contract with county, state or federal governments.


By country

In civil law countries, following the model from the French Napoleonic Code of criminal procedure, the courts typically appoint private attorneys at the expense of the state.


Australia

The Australian states of Victoria and
New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...
both have dedicated Public Defenders chambers. These chambers retain barristers who are employed by the state government to represent legally-aided clients who are charged with serious
indictable offence In many common law jurisdictions (e.g. England and Wales, Ireland, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore), an indictable offence is an offence which can only be tried on an indictment after a preliminary hearing ...
s. In New South Wales, Public Defenders only appear in criminal matters, both at trial and
appellate In law, an appeal is the process in which cases are reviewed by a higher authority, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of clarifying and ...
level, while in Victoria, Public Defenders also undertake some family law and civil work. The New South Wales Senior Public Defender is Belinda Rigg, Senior Counsel, who was the first female public defender in NSW upon her appointment in 2019. In Victoria, the Chief Public Defender is Tim Marsh. In
Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , establishe ...
, the Legal Aid Office (Queensland) was merged with the Public Defender's Office in 1991, in an expanded service providing clients to access family, civil and all criminal law services.


Brazil

The
Constitution of Brazil The Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil ( pt, Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil) is the supreme law of Brazil. It is the foundation and source of the legal authority underlying the existence of Brazil and the fede ...
uniquely provides for a public defenders' office (''Defensoria Pública'') at both state and federal levels. Public defense is a right to poor people, who must declare, formally, that they cannot afford regular legal aid, to benefit from public defenders' services. Public defenders, like
prosecutors A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the case in a criminal tria ...
and judges, are admitted to their positions through civil service examination. The public defender's office assists the poor and lower middle-class in both civil and criminal matters, although the poorest states in the country are still struggling to set up a state public defenders office. Public defense in Brazil dates back to 1897, when a decree mandated government-funded legal assistance in the state of Rio de Janeiro, then called Legal Assistance (''Assistência Jurídica''). The Constitution of 1937 extended ''Assistência Jurídica'' to the entire country, but without the same effectiveness that is derived from the current, 1988 Constitution.


Germany

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
provides legal representation, legal advice, and help in covering court costs in civil cases to those who cannot raise the necessary funds to hire an attorney, but only when there is a reasonable chance of success. In criminal cases where the defendant faces at least one year of imprisonment, the defendant has the right to legal counsel. Although there is a right to legal defense, there is no organized public defender system. Instead, any lawyer can be appointed to provide counsel to a specific defendant, and the defendant can select a specific lawyer. Questions of payment are deferred until the end of a trial, and the court will decide the cost of the case to the losing party. The defendant will not be charged for legal services if acquitted. If convicted, the defendant will be required to pay the lawyer's expenses unless the court finds that the defendant is indigent.


Hungary

In Hungary, the police, the public prosecutor or the court (depending on what individual cases require) appoints a criminal defender at the state's cost to defend those who can not afford a chosen lawyer. The defence counsel's participation is required by the Criminal Procedure Act. Usually a private lawyer is appointed, one for each defendant, and conflict of interest between contradicting suspects is avoided, e.g. the same lawyer may not represent two accused whose evidence is mutually contradictory. If convicted, although in principle the defendant is liable for the fee, it is rarely pursued.


India

In India, free legal aid is provided by National legal services authority. It is available at all the levels of court. https://nalsa.gov.in/services/legal-aid


Singapore

Legal assistance in Singapore is provided by the State and the Pro Bono Services Office of the Law Society. The State provides legal assistance in criminal cases where the accused faces the
death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...
. The government also provides legal representation and advice in civil cases such as for divorce, child custody, adoption, wrongful dismissal, letters of administration/probate, tenancy disputes, claims in contract and tort, through the Ministry of Law's
Legal Aid Bureau The Legal Aid Bureau (LAB) in Singapore is a department under the Ministry of Law of the Government of Singapore. LAB provides legal representation and advice in civil matters to persons of limited means. The department is headed by the Directo ...
(LAB). Assistance from the LAB is not free, and most clients are required to contribute towards the costs of the work done, but the amount a client is charged depends on a number of factors, among them the client's financial means. The Pro Bono Services Office of the Law Society runs the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme, which provides criminal legal assistance to the poor and needy who are unable to afford a lawyer, and are facing charges in a Singapore court for non death-penalty offences under statutes covered by CLAS.


United Kingdom

There are a small number of
Public Defender Service In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichke ...
offices in
England and Wales England and Wales () is one of the three legal jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. It covers the constituent countries England and Wales and was formed by the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. The substantive law of the jurisdiction is En ...
with lawyers employed directly by the Legal Aid Agency to provide advice in police stations and representation in
magistrates and crown courts The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a ''magistratus'' was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judici ...
. The Public Defender Service has existed since 2001, a department of the Legal Aid Agency, an Executive Agency of the Ministry of Justice (UK). It has four offices across England and Wales. The majority of state funded criminal defence work, however, is provided by private duty solicitors contracted to the Legal Aid Agency and paid by the case under the legal aid scheme. In Scotland a wider network of Public Defender Solicitor Office (PDSO) lawyers employed by the
Scottish Legal Aid Board The Scottish Legal Aid Board (SLAB) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government, responsible for managing legal aid. It was established in April 1987, under the Legal Aid (Scotland) Act 1986, taking over function ...
(SLAB) are available to represent those accused of crimes in addition to private lawyers ( duty solicitors) paid under the legal aid scheme. The PDSO is a
not-for-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
organisation funded through SLAB.


United States

The 1963
US Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...
case ''
Gideon v. Wainwright ''Gideon v. Wainwright'', 372 U.S. 335 (1963), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires U.S. states to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who are unable to ...
'' held that the Sixth Amendment's right to counsel provision requires the government to provide legal counsel to indigent defendants in criminal cases. Different jurisdictions, however, use different approaches in providing legal counsel for criminal defendants who can't afford private attorneys. Exactly which defendants qualify as "indigent" also varies by jurisdiction: Often a state will stipulate a maximum income threshold above which a defendant is not considered to be indigent, and thus does not qualify for a public defender. This threshold may vary depending on the severity of the crime with which a defendant is charged. For example, a defendant's income may be too high to entitle him or her to a public defender in
misdemeanor A misdemeanor (American English, spelled misdemeanour elsewhere) is any "lesser" criminal act in some common law legal systems. Misdemeanors are generally punished less severely than more serious felonies, but theoretically more so than adm ...
proceedings, but sufficiently low to qualify them as indigent when faced with a
felony A felony is traditionally considered a crime of high seriousness, whereas a misdemeanor is regarded as less serious. The term "felony" originated from English common law (from the French medieval word "félonie") to describe an offense that res ...
charge. The term public defender in the United States is often used to describe a lawyer who is appointed by a court to represent a defendant who cannot afford to hire an attorney. More correctly, a public defender is a lawyer who works for a public defender's office, a government-funded agency that provides legal representation to indigent defendants. The court appoints the public defender's office to represent the defendant, and the office assigns a lawyer to the defendant's case. In the federal criminal court system and some states and counties, representation is through a publicly funded public defender office. The state of Oregon is the only state in which indigent defense is exclusively provided by non-profit firms which are contracted and funded by the state. Other courts may appoint private lawyers who have agreed to represent indigent defendants, with appointment being either on a contractual basis, through which the lawyer accepts an agreed number of cases from the court for the term of the contract, or a case-by-case basis. The majority of the states in the U.S. employ some combination of these delivery models.


See also

*
Duty counsel A duty solicitor, duty counsel, or duty lawyer, is a solicitor whose services are available to a person either suspected of, or charged with, a criminal offence free of charge, if that person does not have access to a solicitor of their own and us ...
* Duty solicitor *
Legal aid Legal aid is the provision of assistance to people who are unable to afford legal representation and access to the court system. Legal aid is regarded as central in providing access to justice by ensuring equality before the law, the right to c ...
*
Legal aid in the United States Legal aid in the United States is the provision of assistance to people who are unable to afford legal representation and access to the court system in the United States. In the US, legal aid provisions are different for criminal law and civil la ...


Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Public Defender Criminal procedure Legal aid Lawyers by type Defender Public defenders no:Offentlig forsvarer