Federal public defender

Federal public defender organizations are public defender entities within a federal government. Federal public defenders are public defenders who work for federal defender organizations.

United States

Politics of the United States of America
This article is part of a series on the

Federal Government Constitution of the United States Law Taxation
Legislature United States Congress House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan (R) Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R) Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D) Congressional districts United States Senate President Joe Biden (D) President Pro Tempore Orrin Hatch (R) Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) Minority Leader Harry Reid (D)
Executive President of the United States President Barack Obama (D) Vice President Joe Biden (D) Cabinet Federal agencies Executive Office
Judiciary Supreme Court of the United States Chief Justice John Roberts Kennedy Thomas Ginsburg Breyer Alito Sotomayor Kagan Courts of Appeals District Courts Other tribunals
Elections Presidential elections Midterm elections Off-year elections
Political parties Democratic Party Republican Third parties
Federalism State Government Governors Legislatures (List) State courts Local government
Other countries Atlas United States portal

In the United States, federal public defender organizations are entities in the United States Federal Government, and their staffs are federal employees. Federal public defenders handle criminal trials in United States Federal Court for alleged federal crime or criminal cases involving state law violations in which a federal court can assert federal jurisdiction.

History

The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court guarantees an criminal defendant the right to representation by an attorney in serious criminal prosecutions.^[1]

Chief federal public defender

The chief federal public defender is appointed to a four-year term by the United States courts of appeals of the circuit in which the defender organization is located. The United States Congress placed this appointment authority in the United States courts of appeals rather than with the United States district court in order to insulate federal public defenders from the involvement of the court before which the defender principally practices.^[1]

Organizations

There are two types of federal defender organizations: federal public defender organizations and community defender organizations. There are 81 authorized federal defender organizations. These organizations employ more than 3,100 lawyers, investigators, paralegals, and support personnel and serve 91 of the 94 federal judicial districts.

Cases

In 2014, the United States Sentencing Commission reported that there 75,998 federal criminal cases in which an offender was sentenced in United States federal court.^[2]

Notable defenders

References

1 2 "Defender Services". uscourts.gov. Retrieved 12 October 2015.
↑ "Overview of Federal Criminal Cases" (PDF). ussc.gov. United States Sentencing Commission. Retrieved 12 October 2015.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Saturday, October 24, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.