#53: South Carolina’s Sixth Amendment-Free Zones

The Criminal Docket

Last year, NACDL released its first report on South Carolina’s summary courts, Summary Injustice: A Look at Constitutional Deficiencies in South Carolina's Summary Courts. This first report was a joint project with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of South Carolina. Then, earlier this year, NACDL released its second report on South Carolina's summary courts, Rush to Judgment: How South Carolina's Summary Courts Fail to Protect Constitutional Rights. As demonstrated in the reports, these courts routinely fail to inform defendants of their right to counsel and refuse to provide counsel to the poor at all stages of the criminal process. South Carolina summary courts also regularly violate the Constitution by sentencing defendants to jail simply because they cannot afford to pay fines.

In this podcast, we hear from Diane DePietropaolo Price, who until recently served as NACDL’s Public Defense Training Manager. Diane was the lead author of the 2016 Summary Injustice report. We also hear from Dr. Alisa Smith, the Chair of the Department of Legal Studies at the University of Central Florida. Dr. Smith was the lead researcher and co-author of Rush to Judgment. Learn more about NACDL. Ivan J. Dominguez, host; Alexandra Funk and Ian Nawalinski, production assistants. Music West Bank (Lezet) / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 and Walkabout (Digital Primitives) / CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. Running time: 27m57s.