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Rigged: When Race and Poverty Determine Outcomes in the Criminal Courts

Bright, Stephen B.
Keywords
Race; Poverty; Criminal Law; Death sentence;
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Faculty Scholarship Series
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Rigged- When Race and Poverty.pdf
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Abstract
A Pennsylvania newspaper recently reported that many people sentenced to death in that state since 2005 were represented by lawyers who were drug and alcohol addicts, had histories of mishandling cases or were convicted felons.1 Eighteen percent of those sentenced to death had been represented by lawyers who had been disciplined for professional misconduct. A majority of those lawyers had received the most serious discipline: suspension or disbarment. A reporter from the paper asked how was it possible that the most important cases-involving life and death-were being handled by the least capable lawyers. The answer is that the system is rigged against the poor and against people of color.
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13051/18323