[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

"How do you propose the lawyer be paid then?"

Let the FAMILY and FRIENDS of the accused/convicted pick up the tab. If the person is wrongly accused, surely they will have others who would be glad to help...after all, taxes are **all** of us helping--strangers--against our will. Used to be, those in prison pretty much had to rely on family for food, water and clothing...but that was way before our present and more humane--OVERLY humane--times and our modern country clubs for violent acts of homosexual domination....

[mcg1969]

What if the person is a loner whose family has died?

Blurblogger, our Constitution guarantees everyone counsel. Everyone. And frankly I think it implies that the government has to pay for it if they can't afford it themselves. I don't think it would be constitutional to force family and friends to pick up the tab either; they are't the ones committing the crime.

I'm all with you about the country club prisons though. I've toured Alcatraz more than once and lamented that our prisons aren't still more like that.

[mcg1969]

Just to be clear though, if someone is convicted, I am all for draining their estate to reimburse the government for the cost of counsel. That obviously won't do much in the Terry Nichols case but that is an exceptional case. (Which raises another point---we shouldn't be basing our judicial structure, such as public defense, on exceptional cases like his.)