In August 2001, prompted by concerns that indigent defendants in Coweta County, Georgia, were not receiving adequate legal representation, the Southern Center for Human Rights filed a class action suit against the county. The center asserts that “Over half of the poor people found guilty of some offense in the Superior Court of Coweta County in the last two and a half years were not represented by counsel.” In addition, those defendants who did receive counsel “are processed through the system without essential components of effective representation such as adequate, private and confidential consultation with an attorney.”

The situation in Coweta County arose despite the 1963 case Gideon v. Wainwright, in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared that an attorney must be provided to any defendant too poor to hire his or her own lawyer. While this mandate...