Public Defense for Everybody Equals Justice : A criminal case is the concern of all. Fairness shouldn’t require the ability to pay experts.

The Simpson case, more than most, exposes the degree to which our criminal-justice system falls short in its commitment to the American principle of “equal justice for all.” We pride ourselves on providing the fairest criminal-justice system in the world. But just how “equal” is it really?

Charged with two homicides, O.J. Simpson is pulling out all stops to defend himself. His defense team must be finding it hard to locate a conference room big enough to meet in. And I’m not just talking about the highly paid, high-profile lawyers. There also are the forensic experts, the law clerks, the private investigators, the public-relations people, the psychologists and who knows how many others. Simpson is said to be worth $10 million. Preliminary estimates of his legal fees start at $1 million. Certainly if I found myself in Simpson’s shoes and had his money, I would spend no less.

But that leads right to the point. I don’t have Simpson’s money and neither do 99% of others in this country charged with homicide. Your run-of-the-mill homicide defendant can’t pay the rent while in jail awaiting trial, let alone hire a roomful of fancy lawyers and forensic experts to get him out of jail and keep him out.

Now, I recognize that the district attorney’s office, while perhaps unable to match Simpson dollar-for-dollar, still will spend a hefty amount of the taxpayer’s purse trying to convict Simpson. Indeed, the district attorney’s office has far more resources at its disposal than do 99% of the other murder suspects it prosecutes each year. In this regard, as in so many others, Simpson’s situation is unique and unequal.

If we really believe in “equal justice for all,” we ought to take steps to change the equation between the resources of the “have” defendants and the “have-not” defendants,” as well as between all defendants and their prosecutors. We must level the playing field. Here’s how we can:

We can create a system under which everyone charged with a crime, be they rich or poor, is defended by a state-provided attorney. Currently, we maintain a public-defender program only for those too poor to hire private counsel. If we were to require all defendants to be represented through such a program we would, of course, need more public defenders. We can solve this by adding staff to the current public-defender programs and by requiring private lawyers who regularly practice criminal law to defend at least one felony criminal case each year for which they receive no compensation. In this way, the wealthy defendant, like Simpson, would receive the same quality and quantity of representation that the poor defendant now receives-- representation which is, by the way, generally excellent.

Finally, we must level the playing field between prosecutor and defendant by allowing defendants’ public defenders to spend as much money defending their clients as the prosecutor spends prosecuting them. If the prosecution decides to hire experts who must be paid out of the public coffers, the defense should be entitled to do the same.

But, you may argue, why should a rich man like Simpson be denied the right to spend his wealth any way he wishes, including on a stable full of high-priced criminal lawyers and experts? Isn’t what Simpson spends on his defense a private matter? No, it isn’t. A criminal case is not a private matter; it’s a public matter in which the state has charged one of its residents with having committed a crime against the state. The criminal-justice system is not a new automobile. It’s one thing to say that the rich have the right to buy a Rolls Royce rather than a Chevy. It’s quite another to say that the rich have the right to buy their way out of a prison sentence that the rest of us cannot afford to buy out of--to buy an unequal measure of justice.

So long as we are content to let the fairness and equality of our criminal-justice system be determined by the wealth of the accused, we have no right to say that ours is a nation committed to “equal justice for all.”