NCJ Number
77224
Journal
National Journal of Criminal Defense Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Dated: (Spring 1980) Pages: 63-77
Date Published
1980
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This article describes a study focusing on the effectiveness of Bexar County's implementation of the San Antonio Plan for making competent attorneys available to indigents tried in the district courts in Texas.
Abstract
Since the Supreme Court's ruling in Argersinger v. Hamlin (1972), defending the indigent is requiring more resources. Over 60 percent of those charged with criminal offenses now require publicly supported counsel. This study examines one approach, the San Antonio Plan, which was designed to provide counsel for indigent defendants. The plan seeks to improve representation in two ways: by allowing attorneys to request that they not be appointed to defend indigents and by allowing attorneys to volunteer for more than the normal number of appointments. The plan is administered by the San Antonio Bar Association. For this study, a sample of 1,265 attorneys was chosen from a list of all attorneys licensed to practice in the Bexar County District Courts during 1976. It was hypothesized that those who joined the plan would have significantly fewer criminal cases than those who did not join the plan and that those who volunteered to accept cases beyond their normal assignments would engage in criminal practice to a greater extent than those who did not volunteer. Only felony cases were examined. Routine descriptive statistics, frequency counts for several variables, and cross-tabulations between attorney status in the plan and other variables were run. The hypotheses were confirmed through data analysis. In addition, the plan is working with regard to the elimination from the defense pool of those attorneys who were unable or unwilling to defend indigents. Four footnotes and six tables are provided.