And friends, they may think it's a movement

From the San Jose Mercury News, a follow-up guest editorial, Public defender movement a reminder of justice denied:

Recently I was writing an article about Clara Foltz, the first female lawyer in California... At the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, Clara Foltz launched the public-defender movement with a compelling description of the evils she had seen herself.

While I was putting the finishing touches on my article, the Mercury News published its exposé of criminal justice in the county where Clara Foltz first practiced. It describes the same incompetence and neglect that she portrayed in her speeches and writings: the same.

A hundred years after Foltz shocked her World's Fair audience, thousands still serve unjust sentences because they did not have adequate counsel...

Plus ça change?

Update: Blast! PD Stuff beat me to this by a day! More proof that p.d. investigators are quicker on the uptake than p.d.'s (or at least this p.d.)