US concerns over 'justice for all' | World News |Axisoflogic.com

As the US recession shows no sign of easing, the nation's criminal justice system is also beginning to buckle under severe financial and logistical strains.

The US constitution and a landmark supreme court decision in 1963, ensure that all citizens have the right to "due process" and to a government-paid lawyer to defend them in court if necessary.

But in some US states those lawyers – known as public defenders – are rebelling amid complaints of overwork, with some asked to take on more than 200 cases a year.

Some have refused to take on more cases, and are taking legal action against the state governments which pay them.

Low pay

Others are leaving, also disillusioned with the relatively low pay.

In Florida, salaries for public defenders start at around $40,000 a year – a fraction of what private lawyers make.

It was that figure - and the increasingly large number of cases that he had to take on - that caused lawyer Arthur Jones to finally give up on his dream of defending the poor in November last year.

"As much as I enjoyed fighting for the cause, I wasn't able to accomplish the same amount as I used to be able to with a higher case load," he says.

"The other effect of the budget crisis is there are no pay raises, and I needed to be able to take care of my children."

'Public pretenders'

With more public defenders leaving the profession, and an increasing caseload for those still in the job, Jones argues that the pressure means it is increasingly difficult to offer poorer citizens the legal protection they need.

"You are more likely to stay in the system longer than you need to, you may end up in prison for something you didn't do," he says.

The problem, compounded further by the ailing US economy, has left the public sceptical about the service.

Those who cannot afford to pay for their own lawyers accept a court-appointed public defender, but that often scares them.

"I have a violation of probation, a financial thing, and I have to use a public defender," says on woman outside the Broward county courthouse in Florida.

"I'm nervous. They have too many cases and can't do the best job on cases they do have.

"They call them public pretenders," another young man tells us.

"They pretend like they are fighting your case, but they are fighting you."

'Labour of love'

Many public defenders still at work declare openly that money has nothing to with the job.

For them, it is a labour of love, a crusade, or in the case of Huda Ajlani, a way of paying respects to her new country.

"[My parents] came from a country [Syria] where if they were arrested they would have no rights to an attorney," she says.

"They would be arrested, go to trial without seeing the evidence.

"In the US we have trials, we have evidence and we have the rights that need to be protected."

Howard Finkelstein, a public defender in Broward County, is also passionate about the ideal of equal justice for all and about preventing the state and police from abusing their power.

"America is an incredible place that was birthed upon a very simple notion that all men are created equal," he told Al Jazeera.

"If we have two different standards of justice, if the rich get different dispositions or handled differently than the poor, if the poor go to jail while the rich go free ... there would be no reason for America to exist."

Little protection

The problem now, of course, is that there is less and less money to pay for that service.

The giant stimulus and bailout packages recently approved by the US government provide very little extra money for a cash-strapped criminal justice system.

And Howard Jones, another public defender in Florida, says that Americans may discover there are things just as important as the near-universal healthcare that Barack Obama, the US president, is trying to create.

"I'm not going to haggle over what is more important, but I prefer to be sick and free, than healthy and stuck in jail for a crime I didn't commit," he says.

Al Jazeera