How Important to Freedom Is the Use of Self-Representation in Courts?

Question by janshouse justice for all: How important to Freedom is the use of self-Representation in Courts?
There is a simple means for State and Federal courts to Invalidate, administiring Justice to the Lower half of Americans. They simply dismiss the case, before the trial. They either use the excuse of a lack of “standing” Or the pretense there are “no issue of fact” to toss out VALID Cases.

This smoking mirror is what Americans are dying for, to obtain in Iraq.

Yet based upon income, the bottem half of Americans cannot afford to hire a lawyer-So many of these Valid civil cases are either decided against the poor. Or the cases Brought by the poor are Prematuely thrown out of court.

People who work for $ 10.00 an hour, can rarely afford to use lawyers. The cases of people who are routinely underpaid are decided against them. And they cases they bring are dismissed. While the ACLU looks the other way.

What better aim of the ACLU then to Insure the fairness of this lands Courts. Other wise our troops fights merely for the American Illusion of Freedom.

Best answer:

Answer by dba_gregg
This war isn’t about American freedom or the bill of rights of freedom of speech. People need to stop saying that.

First off when a poor person brings a civil case ususally they can hire a good attorney because they have a no win no pay policy. These attorneys need to win more than 1/3 of the time in order to remain profitable. You should know this.

The ALCU fights for the rights of people who are stuck with incompetent counsel all the time. That’s a large percentage of their cases! Please do research.

Answer by mammabecki
Our entire judicial system is going to pot . The poor cannot afford good representation and the judges, mostly, won’t take you seriously if you represent yourself, because they’re in tight with the lawyers who do not want anybody to represent themselves for obvious reasons.
Of course, there is the option of being assigned a public defender by the court. These are all regular lawyers with practices who are putting in a certain number of years representing the poor who are accused of a crime but have no money to pay an attorney. They do the work “Pro Bono” which means they do it free of charge to the client, but sometimes are compensated by the court. From experience I don’t trust public defenders in general (although I’m sure there must be some good ones). I have worked as a volunteer religious minister and counselor in our local county jail for 20 years. I see the inmates one on one, as well in groups. Over the years I have heard the same story hundreds of times, that is that the public defender does not answer their client’s calls or letters for months, nor comes to the prison to see them before the trial date; and then, sometimes it is in court that they come together for the first time, and the lawyer has never bothered to study the case or previously interview the client. The worst part is that in many of these cases, the public defender will tell the judge how the prisoner is going to plead without briefing the client first, and this can be very dangerous. It is also unethical, but unfortunately it happens all too often.
In one particular case a young woman 27 years old, was accused of arson for burning down her own mobile home (while no one was home). At the time she was not living there because her husband brought in another woman to live with him and kicked her out of the home she brought to the marriage even denying her to take the children with her and letting his new live in girlfriend take over as the motherof the kids. The accused woman then filed for divorce and custody of their 2 children. The husband became even more vindictive and refused to let her or her children’s maternal grandparents have any contact with them. He got himself a lawyer and counter sued her for divorce accusing her of being a drug addict and a violent person who would even burn down their home, a crime she had not been convicted of. She herself had telltale signs of having been beaten for many years and did admit to being a drug user but said she had quit before she got pregnant and never used again. She claimed that her husband was still in fact using. She was devastated over the thought of losing her babies and cried all the time, and even went on suicide watch in the jail a few times because she could not handle the thought of losing her kids.
It seems like with all this being said, she would definately have had a motive to have committed the crime of burning down her home. However she had proof and all the documentation and witnesses lined up to prove her innocence. The only problem was that she was in jail for several months before she was granted a pretrial hearing but she was never contacted by her public defender who was assigned to her when she was arrested. She tried many times to make contact with this attorney so she could present a defense and the lawyer never responded. She met her public defender for the first time only minutes before the hearing. She was told not to talk because the attorney would handle everything. When she went before the judge, her public defender gave a plea of “Guilty”. She was floored because she felt she had aright to defend herself if she is innocent. Then she tried to say that that was not what she wanted to plead because she had a defense, and that her lawyer had not consulted with her ever. Naturally she was upset and the judge held her in contempt. Afterward, the woman asked the public defender why she pleaded guilty on her behalf without ever first finding out that she did not want to plead guilty because she had a valid defense if anyone would listen. The lawyer answered that it was because she knew how that particular judge thinks, and that she knew that because of the prisoner’s past history (which did not include arson), the judge would never allow a “not guilty” verdict. Then she went on to tell her client that she is working toward a judgeship herself and needed a certain number of “wins” to qualify. She was speculating that the judge was going to adjudicate the woman as “guilty” no matter what, so that if she pleads guilty and then is judged to be guilty it is still a”win” for the lawyer, but if she pleads innocent and is found to be guilty then it is a “lose” for the lawyer. This public defender was, in effect, playing roulette with the poor woman’s very life for her own benefit. In fact because the poor woman could not afford another lawyer and was undefended by this one, this 27 year old mother of two babies was ruled guilty and sent to the federal penitentiary for 27 years. She will be 54 years old and will never see her children grow up. I have been in contact with the prisoner who has already served6 years of her 27 year sentence, and she has learned to forgive and accept this unjust scourge put on her life. She has turned to prayer and is now assisting the jail chaplain in his work. How sad that even the lawyers appointed to help the poor many times do not.
.Here we have just a small glimps of the trend our justice system is headed toward. However, there is also Legal aid. They do do a good job and are probably your best bet if you cannot afford a regular lawyer, but you have to qualify. You can’t own a house or a small business and you have to earn a poverty level salary. They will charge you a lesser fee than other lawyers and it will usually be on a sliding scale. But I have seen situations where they do not always help you to the full extent because of their overloads and the fact that these lawyers workon a fixed salary.

The ACLU is not exactly for the poor to use for their everyday legal problems, but are supposed to be highly specialized to take cases that defend democracy and the constitution and the freedom of the American people. However it has evolved into an evil instution that mostly defends against the American people and religion and morality, and in favor of all of the things that we hate and degrade us as a society in the name of “Freedom of Speech”. It is a travesty that it has come to this and they are hurting this nation and aiding the cause of the destruction of the priciples our nation has held strong and dear since it’s inception. They will be instrumental in finding a way for the terrorists to take over this country someday because the moral fiber and the morale of it’s citizen will have been shredded to pieces by the sinister efforts.of the ACLU. Now they are railroading their liberal agenda by using the courts and their “in the pocket activist judges” to overturn the laws that are passed in the senate and the cogress by our democratically elected officials that represent the American people,and then signed by the President. An example is the Ban on Partial Birth Abortion which is just another name for Infanticide. Their are many more examples where the American people overwhelmingly want to have religious symbols in the schools and in public areas where they live as a community, and the ACLU goes over their heads and uses their judges to rule against these things that are voted for democratically. This is the evil we are fighting and it will cost us our freedom and our Democracy. Ironically they hide behind the words: “Freedom of Speech”, “Disrimination” and “Diversity”. The reality is that while they say that they and their clients have the freedom to say anything they want, but they will do anything to supress anyone else’s freedom to say what they believe in if it contradicts their agenda. According to the ACLU we should not be allowed to practice religion freely and they will go to great lenths to supress anyone who is expressing their religion. So where is the freedom or the fairness in that? They will defend the Ku Klux Klan before they will defend the Jew or the Black being threatened by them. They would rather defend the terrorist who trys to kill us than to defend the victim against the terrorist. So they are anti American as well. And they will defend an illegal alien charged with murder against deportation. It goes on and on.

Our only recourse is prayer and the grace to stand strong against these things no matter how difficult it gets because if we let them win, in the end we lose our freedom.

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