Public Defender Quotes

Being a public defender makes you incredibly paranoid - and I would say with reason - about law enforcement.

I was covering the Supreme Court when it decided Gideon v. Wainright, and the case has always had special meaning for me.

I was a federal public defender during the most important years of the drug war. I saw people go to jail for nothing, and go to jail for a long time.

I represented many of these kids as they become young adults in the criminal justice system when I was a public defender. One way of reaching out is by the mind of experimentation.

I stand on my public record as a defender of the human rights of Muslims, notably my work for Moazzam Begg and other British Muslims detained without trial in Guantanamo Bay.

I enjoyed [playing lawyer in From The Hip] as an ode to my dad. My dad went to Harvard and Harvard Law School, so he had some friends that practiced in Boston. So, there was a big law firm that he hooked me up with the senior partner, then the senior partner hooked me up with a young lawyer who worked in the firm. And the young lawyer was married to a public defender. So I would hang out with them, and I could see both sides of it, those that are corporate attorneys and those that help the poor and the disenfranchised.

Whenever you see me at court, understand that I will aid you without fee or reward ... the written Constitution is my client and the preservation of its protection is the only fee I asked.

Indigent defense ... has no constituency. The only reason to give adequate funding ... is because it's the right thing to do. In this political climate, that means nothing.