Simple Justice on the recent SCOTUS decision, Turner v. Rogers (PDF):
Turner may implicate a wide variety of scholarly issues, but who cares. What matters most about the decision, like Gagnon, is that a person goes to jail without having a lawyer to defend him because he’s indigent. And his failure to prove indigence, because he has no one to tell him anything is proved in court, doesn’t mean that he’s not indigent or that it’s straightforward. The need for counsel is because of the need to defend; the failure of the defense isn’t proven because the unrepresented defendant doesn’t know how to do so.
And calling the jailing of a person “civil” doesn’t mean they put curtains on the cell windows. Jailing is jailing, and putting lipstick on its doesn’t make it more civil than criminal, an artificial distinction used to deprive the guy going to jail of the ability to defend himself.
So pontificate all you want about the fascinating collateral issues that will keep scholarly folks busy and launch a thousand law review articles. Guys like Norm (and even me) see a very different point in Turner, that no person should be sentence to jail without a lawyer to defend him. And that being too poor to afford counsel is a damn poor reason to jail someone.
I’m so glad the SCOTUS term is over. I’d sum it up this way: Corporations are awesome! When it comes to corporate power vs. the people (or any person or group of persons), corporations will always win! And if you’re poor, too bad! Rot in jail! And police? You can do whatever you want; we no longer care if your actions are constitutional so long as you keep arresting the “bad” guys and keep those prisons full! Thanks!
