I missed the staff meeting but the minutes show Larry Jaques
wrote back on Thu, 03 Mar 2005 16:07:59
-0800 in rec.crafts.metalworking :

No doubt some of them were indeed guilty of the crimes they
had been charged with. What's worse, knowing that they're back
out on the street - or knowing that you live in a country where
a man who cannot read or write, and cannot afford a lawyer, can
be convicted of a crime and sent to jail?

What does any one of those things have to do with the others?
Our justice system, such as it is, says that ignorance is no
excuse. And poor folks get free legal representation.

Now. That was the whole point of Gideon v. Wainright: you have the
right to lawyer, if you can not afford a lawyer, one will be provided for
you.

As for the ignorance and unlettered often getting the wrong end of the
deal, that too is unfortunately part of the way things work. Chuck Colson
writes of when he was in prison, and was asked for help by one of his
fellow inmates. Now Colson, being a hot shot legal type himself, knew what
kind of trouble _he_ could get into, for practicing law while a felon. But
when he saw what the guy had written, he said to himself "this guy hasn't a
clue as to what happened, is happening, or what he can do about it." And
proceeded to help this guy as much as he could, putting that high price
education of his to work "pro bono."

--
pyotr filipivich.
as an explaination for the decline in the US's tech edge, James
Niccol wrote "It used to be that the USA was pretty good at
producing stuff teenaged boys could lose a finger or two playing with."