Public defenders essential

CYNICISM about the legal profession is such that lawyers often rank among the most unpopular professions in opinion polls. If there were no bad people, the novelist Charles Dickens once wrote, there would be no good lawyers.

But such cynicism ignores the fact that the profession, for better or worse, serves a noble cause.

Without lawyers, and specifically defence lawyers, cases brought against accused people cannot be properly ventilated, evidence cannot be tested, the most vulnerable people in society who find themselves in the prisoner’s dock cannot marshal an appropriate defence.

Miscarriages of justice, already a theoretical possibility, would become all but an inevitability. “Justice” as we know it would cease to exist, replaced by the idea that whoever is pinned for a crime must do the time, regardless of culpability.

We believe, therefore, that the Cabinet should pay careful attention to the call made by the chairman of the Legal Aid and Advisory Authority Gilbert Peterson, SC, for the Public Defenders’ Department to be made permanent.

This month marks exactly three years since the appointment of this country’s first Chief Public Defender, Hasine Shaikh. A few weeks ago also marked the third anniversary of the establishment of Ms Shaikh’s department, which operates from within the authority.

“I am very proud of that department,” Mr Peterson said recently. “It is a successful pilot project, if I could use that term. It has earned its keep.”

At a time when there is concern over a crippling shortage of prosecutors, it might seem odd to be calling for the State to also turn its attention to defenders. Yet there is a symbiotic relationship between both.

“Our job is not to get anyone off,” Ms Shaikh said last week. “Our job is to afford the client a possible defence.”

If there are no prosecutors, then defence attorneys cannot do their job.

Currently, the department oversees representation of clients at the High Court and Court of Appeal in criminal matters, while the authority focuses largely on the magistracy.

There had once been a proposal, made by president of the Criminal Bar Association Israel Khan, SC, for the department to be separate from the authority entirely.

There is merit, too, in this proposal if Cabinet does take steps to entrench this department legislatively. Defenders should be as independent as possible from both the State and quasi-state bodies.

Meanwhile, it is clear that failure to bolster the complement of defenders could have an adverse effect on the system.

About 29 defenders currently have around 900 cases to handle, with the numbers only set to rise once preliminary inquiries in the lower courts are abolished.

If addressing the prosecutorial shortage is urgent, so too is the need to put the Public Defenders’ Department on a stronger footing.