Defenders of the Faith: The heroic public defenders, and how we can help

Gideon's Army is a fine, understated documentary that rightly celebrates the lives, commitments, and struggles of public defenders, in the case in the Deep South, but the same could be and has been done for public defenders in the Northeast or elsewhere - it's a nearly thankless calling, as the movie shows, with most cases ending in some kind of plea in which the client does some jail time, even though often they're innocent - but the risk of losing all at trial and facing a mandatory sentence is too great. Of course most are guilty, and in a weird way that's as it should be: Cops, one hopes, don't randomly arrest people - but all deserve good counsel and a fair trial, and not all get that. The public defenders try to fight against the tide, and they're overwhelmed - the 3 whom this movie focuses on have working caseloads of 120+, which is ridiculous - and underpaid, and often unappreciated by clients and certainly by the public. They are often asked: why do you defend these criminals? People just don't get it. By focusing on 3 defenders the film gives us some real, live drama, as we watch several cases unfold and are with lawyer and client right through the verdict. Very few of these public defenders have the heart to make the work their full-time career - and one of the three moves off into private practice by the end of the film (though still doing a lot of pro bono work and maintaining her ideals); the others are still fighting the good fight. It would seem at the very least that we could have a system in which their student loans were forgiven or paid off by the communities they serve; pathetic to watch one of these fine people use spare change to buy gas as she's out of money by the end of her her pay period.