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An attorney points out that the current state system for compensating lawyers who have indigent clients is unconstitutional and insists that the state system be changed to fairer one. The lawyer told the seven member court it was unfair to require attorneys to pay for the defense services provided poor citizens charged with crimes. What he said brought out reactions and questions from the justices which seemed to indicate their sympathy. In a rural area where no public defenders' offices exist and there is a shortage of lawyers, compensation is an obvious problem. Setting up indigent defense systems and giving cases becomes a responsibility that judges need to fulfill. A fair trial and defense for an indigent criminal is a matter that has to be dealt by the state, not the legal profession. Does the constitution contain the rights that lawyers must have? Of the groups in the United States, only lawyers are being required to contribute their resources to the poor without receiving compensation that is sufficient. Since lawyers are being required by the state to pay to give poor people legal defense, then those from other professions should be required the same thing. Whether or not the compensation will satisfy the attorneys, they have a moral and ethical duty to represent a client. The state, according to him, does not have a constitutional duty to give any form of compensation to the attorney who did public defender work. It has long been the public policy of the state of Kansas that it is the moral and ethical obligation of the legal profession to make representation available to the public. Running out of money is a risk lawyers put themselves in by defending indigent clients. Under the law, attorneys are obligated to take indigent cases, though I am sympathetic about the compensation problem. Attorneys who represent indigent clients have no constitutional right to make a profit from such a representation. For one attorney, he sees nothing wrong with helping the poor despite it being an obligation, provided that he does not encounter financial problems because of it. One justice asked why the payment for private attorneys who represented indigents was cut by $4 when the state encountered financial problems, yet there were no budget cuts made from the public defenders' office. The old federal system where attorneys provided legal representation without any form of compensation worked the same way too, observed the justice. A federal public defenders' system is now available. Attorneys are not only given unfair treatment of having to spend to defend their indigent clients, but their clients are denied their constitutional rights to proper and sufficient legal representation. You'll end up with a weighing scale containing your financial state in one hand and your client's rights on the other. This keeps the defendants from getting their constitutional right to a fair trial. It used to be an honor to be appointed to represent someone. Juvenile and probationary cases were then included in the package. The system is headed for doom. Providing free service once in a while is something I'd be proud to do. The situation became too big to control.
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