Recently a
mental thought spiral lead me to thinking about Miranda rights. Specifically
the statement of “You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an
attorney, one will be provided for you." I was in court for a speeding ticket once and there were other people
there for non-traffic related offenses. A woman was being charged for some
random act of disorderly conduct, or something, and the judge asked if she had
a lawyer. When the woman responded that she didn't, the judge explained that “If
you cannot afford a lawyer one will be provided to you”. The woman perked up a
little when she realized she might get some help. Cool right? Wrong!
The
court official showed here some paperwork indicating what her income had to be
below to receive a court appointed lawyer. The woman quickly handed the court official
back the paper. She stated that she made way more than that, and ended up
having to represent herself. This got me thinking, how much do you have to make
to receive a court appointed lawyer? I mean we hear it in movies/TV all the
time and see people with court appointed lawyers, right?
So I
did a little searching and found that you have to be poor as dirt to qualify
for a court appointed attorney. You roughly need to make less than $15,000 a
year. If you have dependents the amount goes up about $5,000 per dependent, but
for the sake of discussion let’s just stick with a single individual.
What
does an income of $15,000 a year mean? Simply, it’s having a job that pays you
minimum wage, of $7.25 an hour, working 40 hours a week. Which is $15,080
before taxes. After taxes this individual would bring home roughly $191 a week.
$191
a week! How does someone live on that?!? Between rent and food you pretty much wouldn't have any money left. Buy some clothes, if you saved for a year. Go to a doctor?
Only if you're about to die. Short of living on the street, I don’t think it is
realistic in this day and age for anyone to live on less than $15,000 a year. (Children
don’t count. They can be claimed and therefore fall under the families income.)
So
what did I get out of this mental thought spiral? The “You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot
afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.” is a complete joke. Unless you are a
vagrant and in that case you really wouldn't care if you broke a law and were
sent to jail. At least then you would have a roof over your head plus food and clothes
provided to you at the expense of the tax payers. No wonder the jails are
overcrowded.
(Side
note: If you are ever feeling down about your life, go sit in on a municipal
court session. You will instantly realize your life is awesome!)
