Some News From My Old Office

Here's a pretty comprehensive article on the costs and benefits of the public defender system in Dallas County from the Dallas Morning News. The one thing about the article that bothers me is that it continues to point out the problems of campaign contributions and how that affects judges' decisions in appointing private-practice attorneys, which is a perhaps more scandalous on its face, but doesn't talk about the major problem I witnessed with some private-practice attorneys--the financial incentive for the attorney to get the case over with as soon as possible. Strangely, this is cited by the judge as a positive for using private-practice attorneys as opposed to public defenders, and no real mention is made of the divergent interests this can create between the attorney and his client.