So we are still working everywhere to expand policy reforms. We're focusing more on indigent defense, on criminal courts, and particularly what we call America's guilty plea problem, the issue of innocent people pleading guilty to crimes they didn't commit.
Every one of those files is a person who won't get the care, the attention, the protection we would all expect for our loved ones. I was thinking about this when I was watching a video of a man who was one of the leaders of the indigent defense community in Tennessee. He was the public defender who was elected by all of the other Tennessee public defenders to speak for them.
Sure. What are some of the major ways that elements of the justice system have just fallen apart and failed inside the United States? Well, one of the biggest is the chronic underfunding of indigent defense. The vast majority of people-- you can go even beyond that and say, why is it that 80% of the people who are prosecuted
Battisti in Cleveland, and practiced law with the firm of Morrison and Foerster in San Francisco. And while there, he devoted a quarter of his time to pro bono work on behalf of indigent clients. So it is my pleasure to give a warm welcome to Professor Frank H. Wu.
And this has always troubled me enormously, because I remember all of this. And a lot of it has to do with structural racism, but we need a Marshall Plan for indigent defense in this country.
to systems across the country. When you look at all of the offices we've touched, we have literally had a hand in helping shape indigent defense in 27 states across America.
and why they are a human being and they are entitled to be treated like a human being, and punished if necessary if it's appropriate. Unfortunately, the two sides aren't always equal, particularly nowadays, where the defense is so underfunded, particularly indigent defense.
the blood transfusing, the chest tube draining, the respirator pumping, the urine flowing and the blood pressure stable all night until I was relieved in the morning. The angry husband never showed up. So that's another story. We also took care of indigent patients in Chicago. And some of them were alcoholics, criminals, down and out people. And they would lose weight, become malnourished
the river; Los Angeles River. One of the first maps I wanted to use in the book, and this does look pretty compressed, this is the Kirkman Harriman Map. It was created by a very eccentric columnist at the Los Angeles Times. Kirkman Harriman, as it turns out, was a man who was one of the first people to care for the indigent in Los Angeles and he ran the county farm where they would literally take care of homeless people and so forth. I believe that he did a lot of the research on this because he tracked a lot of these kinds of things. Anyway, they
very tight, but be careful not to break the napkin. law school at a big firm with the six figures out of law school or if you're stuck, you know, defending the indigent