
Season’s Greetings from the 6AC! We at 6AC are privileged to travel all across the country to meet with criminal justice stakeholders and policymakers as we aim to help them ensure an effective right to counsel. This year brought us…
Season’s Greetings from the 6AC! We at 6AC are privileged to travel all across the country to meet with criminal justice stakeholders and policymakers as we aim to help them ensure an effective right to counsel. This year brought us…
Pleading the Sixth: The Tennessee Supreme Court released a press statement announcing its unanimous support for comprehensive indigent defense reforms, including the creation of a statewide indigent defense commission and a state appellate defender office, and the first increase in…
Pleading the Sixth: Recognizing that the State of Tennessee needs a better way of providing right to counsel services, in September 2015 former Chief Justice Sharon Lee created an Indigent Representation Task Force and challenged them to “build a better mousetrap.”…
Pleading the Sixth: For nearly five years, the U.S. Department of Justice has been trying to improve the representation of children in delinquency proceedings in Shelby County (Memphis), Tennessee. As the DOJ seeks to put more indigent defense funding responsibilities on…
Pleading the Sixth: Tennessee has a grand tradition of holding almost every government function directly accountable to the electorate. However, a major structural flaw in how the state’s indigent defense budget is requested, defended and allocated between the state’s elected…
The voice of the people is negated on indigent defense in Tennessee. The 6AC points to a new way forward in resolving long-standing structural deficiencies in the state’s district defender conference model. Read more on this topic: Pleading the Sixth: Tennessee undermines…