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Comment by sterlind | Hacker News Reader

does Canada not have public defenders? I know they're overworked but, c'mon, surely they can do better than they did?

I want to see the transcripts.

the defendant hired a private lawyer, Peter Planetta, who resigned from the Nova Scotia Barrister's Society a few months after the defendant was sentenced.

sources: https://www.saltwire.com/nova-scotia/halifax/appeal-court-qu... and https://nsbs.org/general-notices/council-approves-resignatio...

If you find them, let us know.

In the US public defenders don't have time to try cases. They are basically plea bargain assistants.

what happens if the defendant pleads not guilty? does the public defender not bother to show up to trial? do they not represent the defendant? what is this charade?

I found the verdict here: https://www.canlii.org/en/ns/nspc/doc/2024/2024nspc4/2024nsp... but no transcript is given. it has to be requested, it seems.

Public defenders are required to build the best case they can, but the nature of a defense requires hiring experts to contradict the prosecution evidence. Without hiring experts, the public defender is just pounding the table or arguing the technicals of law.

thats not the verdict. Thats the sentencing decision, which just goes into a separate Judge's sentencing hearing and decisions on that.

Public defenders will try your case if you demand trial; in fact, a lot of public defenders probably try more cases than paid attorneys.

The problem is that public defenders generally are starter defense attorneys, they're in the job to get experience so they can eventually quit and take a cushy private role. And secondly, they have very little time to allocate to each case; if the defendant is stuck in jail, then they have even less time to visit the defendant and prepare any kind of useful defense or trial strategy.

A public defender's primary strategy for their client is to, sadly, negotiate the best possible plea deal in the shortest amount of time to get the case off the docket.

(This might actually be in the best interests of the defendant; most defendants are guilty of something in the charging document, even if not everything they've been likely over-charged with; the justice system isn't quite so broken that it scoops up a huge number of factually innocent persons)

Wait so they were also videochatting and the girl saw the actual perpetrator's face at least briefly and this ALSO didn't result in anyone questioning that they got the correct guy?

That depends mostly on the jurisdiction, the structure of public defense in said jurisdiction, and the quality, resourcing, and culture of the individual Public Denfender’s Office. I do understand the view from strictly statistical analysis, but there are subtleties (particularly, misdemeanors vs felonies) in how plea vs trial plays out in various parts of the US not captured by large granularity stats.

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