What about a court-appointed lawyer as your DUI lawyer?
In a criminal prosecution, the person being accused or charged with a crime is entitled to assistance of counsel for his or her defense. This is a right conferred by the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Appointed counsel are required to be available for any person that is accused in criminal court and who is exposed to any likelihood of imprisonment.
As it applies to a drunk driving prosecution, if you cannot afford to pay a private attorney to represent you, then you can request to either defend yourself or be appointed a court-appointed lawyer. Generally, this will be a public defender — a government lawyer whose duty is to provide legal counsel and representation to indigent defendants in criminal cases who cannot afford to pay for legal assistance.
If you cannot afford to hire your own private DUI lawyer to defend you, then at the very least you will want a court-appointed attorney to represent you so you can have a trained lawyer review your case and advise you of whether you should go to trial or try to reach a plea agreement. But here are some facts that you should know about public defenders.
In some counties, an attorney wishing to work as a public defender must go through some training, or in others, vigorous training. However, public defenders are not specialized drunk driving defense lawyers. Public defenders take on all types of criminal cases, ranging from simple assault to murder. Generally, public defenders are overworked, meaning their desks are stacked with tons of files for the many clients they have. As a result, they have a reputation for wanting to plea out cases as often as possible. Whether this is true or not probably depends on each public defenders office and each public defender. And because public defenders are paid by the government, they do not necessarily have at their disposal the budget and resources to investigate all potential defenses on your behalf. This doesn’t mean public defenders commit malpractice, as a result, it just means they cannot devote the same amount of time and resources that a private drunk driving lawyer can.
