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In the annual State of the Judiciary address Monday, California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye (pictured at right) decried the decimation of funding for state courts and taught lawmakers a lesson in legal history, the Los Angeles Times is reporting today. Cantil-Sakauye offered the landmark “right to counsel” 1963 case of Gideon v. Wainwright. Clarence Gideon was arrested and charged in Florida with breaking and entering with intent to commit a misdemeanor, a felony in that state. He was too poor to hire a lawyer, and his request for counsel to be appointed was denied because under Florida law, the only time the court can appoint counsel to represent a defendant is when that person is charged with a capital offense. Forced to represent himself he was found guilty, and sentenced to five years in prison. His subsequent appeal to the Florida supreme court was denied. From his cell, making use of the prison library and writing in pencil on prison stationery, Gideon appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that he had been denied counsel and, therefore, his Sixth Amendment rights, as applied to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, had been violated. The Supreme Court held that the right […]

With severe budget reductions drastically affecting the efficiency and effectiveness of California’s court system, one area law school is combating the cutbacks by offering its new $2-million practice courtroom on campus as an official legal venue. Costa Mesa’s Whittier Law School has announced it will host public court proceedings, including trials and arbitration hearings in its recently completed Kiesel Advocacy Center, a 4,400-square-foot courtroom (pictured at right) that contains a 134-seat spectator gallery, a jury deliberation room, and judge’s chamber. The state-of-the-art facility, which opened last month is named after Whittier graduate Paul Kiesel, senior partner with Kiesel + Larson LLP, who serves as co-chair of the Open Courts Coalition a bipartisan group of lawyers actively lobbying Gov. Jerry Brown and the legislature to reverse the cuts made to the state’s courts. “In the last five years, the courts’ budget has been cut by $1 billion,” Kiesel, told the Los Angeles Times, adding that the cutbacks have resulted in a backlog of 20,000 personal-injury cases in Los Angeles County alone. Calling it “uncharted territory,” Kiesel said he hopes to ease the stress on the financially burdened court system by hosting public proceedings at the private school. “It should quite frankly be […]