The government should be required to pay the defense's attorney's reasonable attorney fees whenever losing a criminal jury trial.

 
Government – Today’s debate shall be conducted within the context of the United States government and its various states, since the examples therein best illustrate why the principles I am advocating should always be enforced.
 
[Attention Getter]
 
Picture this: You’re at a party and are having a good time with your friends. You don’t have to worry about what you’re gonna have for dinner tonight as someone’s cooking on the grill! As you’re waiting for the food to get ready, you look at your cellphone and see you’ve got an email indicating that that job interview you had last week went great and you’re about to get hired to work at the six figure salary job you’ve been dreaming about for a long time. Everything is going great for you!
 
And just when you think it can’t get even greater, it does! You see someone walk through the front door. It is the object of your affections! It is that pretty girl (for those not interested in women, we’ll say ‘good looking dude’ instead) you’ve been pining after for months now! We’ll call her Kira. Kira walks right through the doors, gracing the party with her presence. You’re initially timid about talking to Kira, but after being pushed by your friends to take a shot, you and Kira  start talking and things get even better from there. Before you know it, you and Kira decide to slip into the back bedroom and have some adult fan, with you feeling even better as Kira shouting your name in ecstasy.  And as its time for everybody to leave, Kira gives you her phone number and you can’t help but feel elated about the turn you’re life is taking!
 
The very next day, you decide to send Kira a text message . You haven’t heard from Kira and decide to send her a playful text message “I wanna hear you shout my name some more.” Kira doesn’t respond, so you figure she must be busy or something.
 
Another day passes by and you hear a knock on your front door. You go to open it, only to see several police officers – one officer telling you that he has a warrant for your arrest and that you have the right to remain silent. Next thing you know, you’re in the county jail with multiple felony charges: 4 counts of Aggravated Rape, 1, 1 count of Rape and 2 counts of Especially Aggravated Kidnapping. Somehow, you make bail.
 
You check your email for a moment, only to fall to your knees in depression as you realize that that six-figure job you were going to get is no longer being offered in light of your criminal charges. Not only that, but you were also fired from your currernt job since they want nothing to do with a “rapist.” So now you have no source of income whatsoever.
 
You get to your first court date and see you’ve been appointed a public defender. The public defender talks to you outside the courtroom, telling you that they’ve reviewed the file in the case and that it appears that Kira is claiming that you raped her at the party. You tell the public defender that’s ridiculous, but he tells you that she called the police the next day, crying over the phone and telling them in great detail what you did her; how you even had the audacity to send her a text message afterwards bragging about how you made her scream for her life. You plea to the public defender in great detail, telling him that you would never do something like that, but the public defender simply tells you that he’s got another client to talk to and that he’ll talk more with you later.
 
Eventually, after several more court dates, your public defender gets what is called “discovery” [in laymens terms, any relevant evidence the prosecution has in its possession]. Your public defender goes over the discovery with you and you sigh in relief and you realize that the only evidence the prosecution has is Kira’s statements, the text message, a steak knife that was left in the bedroom you and Kira had sex in and the fact that you’ve admitted to pinning after her for months prior to the party. You even start laughing about it, somewhat overjoyed that this nightmare is about to end.
 
Your public defender, however, sees no such humor. Quite the opposite in fact. Your public defender tells you that you had better take the prosecution’s plea deal. You ask him what he’s talking about and he tells you that the prosecutor is offering to drop your charges down to Aggravated Sexual Assault if you agree to serve a 15 years sentence (60% of which will be served on probation. You tell the public defender “NO!” and say you want to take the case to trial since there’s no evidence of your guilt. The public defender shakes his head and tells you that Kira’s statements is all the evidence that is needed to convict you. You grow extremely outraged, insisting that you could have everybody at the party testify about what happened there, that  everybody testify about how they didn’t hear any screaming and how everybody saw Kira leave without crying for help or anything, but the Public Defender insists that he’s seen plenty of people get convicted for the victim’s statements alone and that you’d be risking 60 years in jail if convicted.
 
You sob inexplicably as you sit in a corner, contemplating the most soul shattering decision of your life.
 
[Introduction]
 
Folks, I present to you the Criminal Justice System! A system where the government will prosecute innocent people [1][2][3][4], a system where criminal defense lawyers are tragically underfunded [5][6] and a system where the government has almost nothing to lose.[7] It is THAT kind of system that leads us to miscarriages of justice like the one I just described. One of the many measures that must be taken to prevent such injustices is the requirement that the government should foot the bill (within reason) when they lose a criminal jury trial. Here, I offer two simple justifications:
 
Contention #1: [Criminal Defense Lawyers would be able to better represent indigent defendants]
 
One of the biggest issues with the Criminal Justice System is the fact that defense attorneys are statistically underfunded.[8] Scenarios like the one I described above are commonplace[9] because a criminal defendant is statistically going to wind up with an attorney whose office is overworked, understaffed and under-resourced.[10]
 
My plan accomplishes two things in this regard: (1) It encourages public defenders and court appointed attorneys to diligently take these cases trial, with the understanding that the fees they’ll obtain upon victory can be used to replenish their own war chests. (2) It encourages ordinarily expensive private attorneys to represent poor defendants, granting people who cannot afford said lawyers in the first place much better legal representation in the process.
 
Contention #2: [The Government would be discouraged from trying cases they weren’t positively sure they could win]
 
The sad reality is that we can’t simply trust the government to act in good faith, recognize common sense and refrain from prosecuting people in the scenario I described [11]. The sad reality is that the government needs strong incentives not to charge people for crimes common sense would dictate as being ridiculous and the possibility of losing alone simply isn’t enough.[12] Therefore, a healthy criminal justice system must be one where the government is required to pay the defense lawyer’s reasonable fees upon losing the case. Under this kind of framework, the government is encouraged to study their cases more methodically and only take a case to trial when it is willing to risk the financial burden of paying the defense’s attorney fees.
 
And that’ll do it for now!
 
[Sources]
 
[1] https://tinyurl.com/y8dhth3k
[2] https://tinyurl.com/yb3csb73
[3] https://tinyurl.com/yb563954
[4] https://tinyurl.com/ycqoay7r
[5] https://tinyurl.com/y7ghrplm
[6] https://tinyurl.com/y8rnkpfl
[7] https://tinyurl.com/y7ka92sv
[8] https://tinyurl.com/ycpkyfmw
[9] https://tinyurl.com/huc54k3
[10] https://tinyurl.com/huc54k3
[11] https://tinyurl.com/y6we8wsj
[12] https://tinyurl.com/y95ukxet

To truly understand how wrong Pro's side is we first need to comprehend the three notions from which their entire case branches out. 

Let's just first of all concede to Pro that overall it's worse for an innocent to be incarcerated than a guilty person to walk free but surely it's not that simple. Rather one severe serial killer walking free, serial molester or three thieves wrongly convicted for being part of a gang and who committed many crimes they weren't convicted for anyway? Think about it for a minute and understand that if overall we are convicting many dangerous individuals but this is done at the sake of wrongly accusing and punishing some innocents, its not as simple as 100% of the time the justice system must feel disgusted for incarcerating an innocent because 0% of the the time it was worth the harshness and readiness to accuse so as to pursue shaky evidence in the pursuit of more careful criminals.

I want to begin by saying it's quite obvious from the sources used by Pro that they are referring to the US in this resolution but even more funny is that they used short URLs as if they are implying that URLs affect the character count (they shouldn't, they should be excluded) and went over the 8k by 57 characters anyway so they concede or incriminate themselves if they don't that URLs and sources section overall should not be included in the character count.

In the US there is a public defenders office that is in every single state and there's even a Federal level of defence attorney but usually the Federal Attorneys specialise in prosecution.[1][2] Since they are publicly funded they are indirectly civil servants and a civil servant's motive is inherently corrupt if it is based on profit as they may as well be a private one.[3][4] If Pro concedes that the motive behind the attorney should be profit, Pro concedes that we should do away with the public defence office altogether and has to prove that the government should not only give up funding that but that they should continue their involvement by further indulging in tax money by paying off attorneys on behalf of wrongly convicted criminals (actually they are not necessarily wrongly convicted, which I will get to in just a moment). Either the public defence office should be funded more, so as to solve the issue of high workloads and all the other issues that result from tired, dispassionate staff in the Public Defender Office of whichever State they are in or the government should completely surrender to capitalism and let private attorneys compete, you can't have the combination of morals Pro has, it is incoherent.

On top of that, let's analyse what Pro is not having in their plan. The only reason Pro is able to justify this is because Pro argues the prosecution team will be better than the defence team, yes? If Pro concedes that the government should offer the same plan to the other side (the side accusing of the crime and their attorneys) then this will make it fair but will immediately render their notion useless and would bankrupt the nation. On the other hand, if Pro says 'ah but it's not just the attorney that wins the case, it's evidence and other things' then Pro cannot justify the funding suggested in the first place. Linking to the previous paragraph, every single cent put into this supposed plan would be better spent on the Public Defenders office (irregardless of winning or losing) so as to help with the mentioned issues of such attorneys instead of helping defeat Capitalism by liquidating the motive to be a good lawyer to a risky case (yes, the opposite issue of a risky case to defense as opposed to a risky case to prosecute).

In actual fact, there's an entire element of the resolution missing in Pro's entire rapist scenario; what motive does the high-flying attorney have to risk defending this framed non-rapist? Clearly the evidence and all other factors are pointing in favour of the lying prosecution but then that would mean if the 'better' attorney took the case the government would more likely than not end up not paying them and the guy they represent would be too poor to do so. In other words, the only cases which will be risk-free enough to take will be cases the public defender could win anyway assuming that public defenders are weak at altering the odds and go by evidence only as Pro suggests.

Pro's case not only defeats itself but is inherently corrupt as it denies the need for the opposite (the prosecution to have the best representation possible) which if it does allow or concede would bankrupt the nation and defeat the entire way private attorneys compete and the motive to have capitalism in the nation of the US at all.

[3] https://publicdefenderservice.org.uk/advocates/about-us/ (This is UK but the same applies to the US in terms of what the public defender is to the country)

Folks, every word you’ve just heard from CON is exactly the kind of self-aggrandizing, self-indulgent, self-righteous, malfeasant garbage that leads to you having to potentially serve 60 years in prison for a crime you did not commit. This is best highlighted by his response to my R1 Attention Getter when he basically says ‘well you should feel sorry for the real rape victims out there too!” I agree, so rather than waste time and effort dogmatically pursuing BS cases like the one I described, why can’t the government dismiss those cases and actually help real victims by focusing their resources on stuff with actual substance?
 
CON starts off by making three conclusory assertions in regards to what I am proposing. I address all three of them throughout my rebuttals with the exception that (1) my plan would bankrupt the country and (2) my plan wouldn’t stop the government malfeasance he is defending. CON will need to present an actual argument (and evidence) before we even entertain the first one! As to the second one, non-elected prosecutors would get fired and elected prosecutors would lose elections for wasting so much tax-payer money. In cases of openly willful malfeasance, the judge can order that the money be taken directly out of the prosecutor’s budget or forfeit their right to absolute immunity and get sued for their stupidity.
 
 
CON starts off by conceding that it is overall worse for an innocent person to be incarcerated than a guilty person to walk free, but then goes on to basically argue the opposite. He talks about serial killers being allowed to walk free, serial molesters, thieves and whatnot. His idea is that these dangerous people are roaming the streets and how my plan is basically inhibiting the government’s capacity to prosecute careful, intelligent criminals.
 
Here’s the thing CON is not getting. It is overall worse for one innocent to be convicted as opposed to ten guilty people being acquitted, but what this age-old adage is really saying is that 1 tyrannical government with the ability to deprive even a single innocent man/woman of their liberty is far more dangerous than 10, 100 or even 1000 serial killers could ever be and history proves this. Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mussolini, Hussein. Men whose regimes were a cancer on the world, but there they were and there men like them and the regimes they lead will always be.
 
A criminal jury trial is a response to this reality. A reality men like Thomas Jefferson saw firsthand under the rule of King George III. And as Mr. Jefferson once said, “I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”[1] A jury is the ultimate acknowledgment of the reality that is government tyranny, is a “legal check on [said] tyranny and thus a hallmark of and safeguard for a truly free people.”
 
The problem we face in modern times is that the prospect of a jury trial alone is not sufficient to keep the government’s tyranny in check. The articles I provided in R1 (cites 1 – 4) are demonstrative of this. Innocent people go to jail in droves and contrary to CON’s sentiments, it isn’t a result of the government wanting to “catch crafty criminals”, but because of political ambitions and because they have very little incentive not to.[3] The example provided from the article titled “The Innocence Deniers” is most telling and speaks to great length on what measures prosecutors will take to hide/destroy evidence as well as do everything they can to undermine exonerating evidence.
 
CON talks a lot about wanting to catch crafty criminals, but a jury trial is not the mechanism to catching so-called “crafty criminals.” Good police work and good investigatory tactics is how you catch crafty criminals. CON wants to put the failings of bad/stupid/lazy police work (which is what we see in my Attention Getter) on the backs of law abiding citizens like you and I.
 
Re: CON Contention #2: [The shakier the case is, the more powerful the criminal!].
 
Or the shakier the case, the greater indication of the so-called criminal’s innocence. So rather than waste time prosecuting innocent people and paying attorney fees for the government’s ineptitude, how about focusing those resources of building your cases and dropping them when you realize there’s no case to be built?
 
Re: CON Contention #3: [We should increase Public Defense Funds instead!]
 
I’m glad CON agrees that the public defense industry should receive better funding, but this concession is a serious tactical error since the premise of my contention is boiled down to “More Money = More incentive.” And so I would not only take the increased funding CON proposed, but I’ll take the attorney fees proposal as well, making the defense all the more capable of opposing the government in its obstinate quest to send people to jail regardless of guilt or innocence. The latter of which the government can avoid simply by not prosecuting cases they don’t have enough evidence to win.
 
Furthermore, CON’s false dichotomy about picking between disbanding funding the public defense industry and “letting private attorneys compete” is absurd, laughable and irrelevant. Absurd because (i) wanting to get paid and wanting to help people is not mutually exclusive and (ii) wanting the ability to afford a sufficient number of staff members, investigators, expert witnesses, research interns and demonstrative exhibits is not “inherently corrupt.”  Laughable because a system that is pretensed on “having a right to an attorney” isn’t inherently capitalistic. Irrelevant because having a well-funded defense and discouraging the government from prosecuting bad cases can be achieved either way (alternative wouldn’t be a good idea for independent reasons).
 
Re: CON Contention #4: This plan is going to skew things completely in favor of criminals no matter how you look at it!]
 
Of course it will! That’s how the criminal justice system is SUPPOSED to work. In the United States, we have the presumption of innocence, we have the right to a grand jury, we have the requirement that the government provide the defense with all of its evidence before trial, we have the right to a jury trial, we have the requirement that the government prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt, we have the right to appeal the case if convicted and we have the right to post-conviction relief. What CON does not get is that the system is SUPPOSED to be SLANTED in favor of the defendant because we REJECT tyranny and we REJECT a system where innocent people can be punished for crimes they did NOT commit. Yet sadly in modern times, the system is somehow slanted AGAINST defendants.[4] My plan is an additional safeguard that serves to tilt the system back in the direction it belongs.
 
Furthermore, CON ask what motive a high-flying attorney has to take the case knowing that he would not get compensated if the government drops it, but private attorneys take similar risks all the time with contingent-fee based cases and already (under the current system) get compensated as would any court appointed attorney for the pre-trial phase of the case. Now if CON wants to additionally make a case for increased court-appointed funding for the private attorneys who take these cases and settle, I’m all ears, but like the rest of CON’s case, that does NOTHING to negate the resolution and NOTHING to get around the fact that behind the litany of weak excuses is the fact that CON is being an enabler for government tyranny.
 
 
Sources:
 
[1] https://tinyurl.com/zbatycm
[2] See above
[3] https://tinyurl.com/y7nzttej
[4] https://tinyurl.com/y8dugbm7
 
 

The criminal justice system presumes innocence purely because you are not put into a prison cell before there being reason to suspect otherwise. In reality, the investigation process and correct application of justice is in fact one that would hold all guilty so long as their committing of the crime be feasible and there be some motive present (rational or not) but I won't say this is disproof of the core value of 'presumed innocence' as this applies to the detectives and not judges or lawyers.

What I will say is that the tone and way Pro is speaking to me should really lose them the conduct vote in my eyes.

I will now reiterate my earlier points but will also add one more.

Additional point: This resolution isn't going to help the poor get representation if it works via the people having to pay first and get reimbursed later if they win, the reason being that the poor wouldn't be able to afford the lawyers in the first place. Furthermore, the semi-poor (middle-lower class) would end up having to pull out many gambles such as mortgages and loans that they know they can't repay if they lose purely to gamble on the win and if the resolution actually is correct and things become fairer then all that is going to happen is the losers are going to cause a lot of debt.

Essentially my case revolves around the following attacks to Pro:

[Summary]
 
One thing you’ll notice about CON’s case is that he does not dispute the primary evil I have cited within the Criminal Justice System and that is the fact that innocent people are regularly convicted for crimes they did not commit and that the government has little to no misgivings about this reality; a fact I have proven with clear and convincing evidence (see PRO cites 1 – 4 in R1 and cites 3 – 4 in R2).
 
Instead, all CON has to offer us is a vague and nebulous rationale in regards to the governments’ need to catch crafty criminals, a proposal to increase funding at the Public Defender’s office and concerns that my plan would skew the justice system in favor of the defendant. At best, CON has offered some means of making public defenders better equipped to represent innocent defendants, but nothing that truly deals with the problem at the root, which is the government’s decision to file charges on cases with weak evidence in the first place. My plan both discourages and punishes the government from initiating such prosecutions and thus does a much better job at addressing a serious problem CON does not contest. For that reason alone, you have more than enough justification to vote PRO!
 
[Housekeeping]
 
Two things I’d like to note about CON’s R2:
 
First, CON’s R2 rebuttal and very brief and does not really address anything I said in my R2. Sometimes, people don’t have the time to invest in these online debates and that’s perfectly understandable. All the same, should CON decide to go back and provide a more substantive response to anything I said in R2, you as the voter are to disregard it since new arguments are expressly forbidden pursuant to Rule #2 in my debate description. Were CON to wait until his R3 to provide a more substantive rebuttal, I would be robbed of the opportunity to substantively engage CON’s rebuttals to things regarding issues brought up in his R1.
 
Second, although CON makes an issue about my conduct in R2, his concerns here are a nonstarter because (i) Rule #5 prohibits voters are awarding anything besides a tie on sources, conduct and spelling/grammar; (ii) Tit for tat. CON called my case nonsense and disgusting in his R1. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
 
Re: CON Contention #1: [The government would be inhibited in its capacity to risk on shaky cases to put away very careful, intelligent criminals!]
 
In R2, CON does not add anything new to this contention and does not really dispute anything I’ve said. What is particularly troublesome for CON’s case is that my plan is a necessary legal check and balance on government tyranny and that a jury trial is not even the mechanism for catching the intelligent and crafty criminals he talks about. Again, good police and good investigations. The failings of bad police work should not be shouldered on the backs of law abiding citizens like you and I.
 
Re: CON Contention #2: [The shakier the case is, the more powerful the criminal!].
 
I asked CON why the government can’t simply focus its resources on building their cases and dropping them when the investigation goes nowhere and CON has given us no answer.
 
Re: CON Contention #3: [We should increase Public Defense Funds instead!]
 
I proposed that we increase public defender AND go alongside my plan and CON has given us no answer.  I addressed his irrelevant false dichotomy on how my plan allegedly rigs the entire system of capitalism, but CON has given us no answer there either. The bottom-line here is that the better funded a public defender’s office is, the better it is able to perform and that public defender’s offices throughout the country are drastically underfunded. These notions about capitalism don’t even make sense since the criminal justice system is premised on people having the right to counsel, which is why people are given free lawyers in the first place. If CON’s quibble is about who exactly is doing the work, that is not dispositive to this debate.
 
Re: CON Contention #4: This plan is going to skew things completely in favor of criminals no matter how you look at it!]
 
CON has said nothing to address the fact that system is SUPPOSED to be skewed in favor of the defense. He does briefly address one’s presumption of innocence, but says nothing about the fact that the presumption of innocence is a burden the government is required to overcome and that said presumption would (by his logic) “skew things completely in favor of criminals no matter how you look at it!” As I pointed out last round, the criminal justice system is full of things that are designed to do that. And yet despite the litany of advantages criminal defendants are supposed to have, the system is still skewed in favor of the government (see PRO R2 cite 4).
 
CON briefly addresses people who are framed (going so far as to say that the evidence in such cases is going to be planted), but that’s not generally what’s going on when the government prosecutes an innocent person. In cases like the one I described in my attention getter, there is generally no evidence of ‘planted evidence.” The sad reality of the Criminal Justice System is that people can get convicted based on witness testimony alone.[1] That is what nearly happened in the case I submitted in R1 Cite #11.
 
Re: CON Contention #5 (additional point made in CON R2): The resolution won’t help poor people get better representation!
 
CON says my plan wouldn’t help poor people get better representation because poor people wouldn’t be able to afford the lawyers in the first place. This is false. The government would pay the lawyers upon a not guilty verdict by the jury. Lawyers are already well accustomed to working on contingent-fee arrangements in other cases, so this is nothing new. What’s more, the current system already pays private court-appointed attorneys, which is why I said that “if CON wants to additionally make a case for increased court-appointed funding for the private attorneys who take these cases and settle, I’m all ears . . .”
 
CON also takes about struggles the semi-poor would face in having to “pull out many gambles such as mortgages and loans”, but a contingent-fee arrangement involves no such risk whatsoever to the client and thus CON’s concerns are without merit.
 
CON also says that the losers, under my plan, would cause a lot of debt, but much like his earlier assertion about bankruptcy, he provides no evidence to support this. One thing my plan does do is discourage the government from taking stupid cases (like the one in the Attention Getter) to trial, thus debt would be something the government would have the means of preventing in the first place.
 
CONCLUSION:
 
When we last left off in our little tale in R1, you were explicably sobbing about having to decide between serving a 15 year sentence or risking 60 at a jury trial. Sobbing which lasted for hours. Sobbing mixed with pain and despair. And sobbing . . . that came to an abrupt end.
 
You open your eyes, realizing that it was merely all a dream. That you didn’t lose your job, that you didn’t lose all of your money bonding yourself out of a jail, that no one is accusing you of a reprehensible crime and that your life wasn’t essentially over. You even get a reply text from Kira, asking you when would be a good time to hang out later in the evening. A text you're hesitant to respond to initially in light of the nightmare you just suffered, but one you answer nonetheless with a sigh of relief. Chuckling in delight, you relish in the fact that a world where the government can destroy you for crimes you did not commit is only the stuff of nightmares. What’s more, you relish in the fact that you live in a society that has zero tolerance for that kind of behavior from the government.  
 
A society that you, DART members, won’t live in until we take the necessary steps to live there. My plan is the first step forward in that direction!
 
Vote PRO!
 
Sources:
[1] https://tinyurl.com/y835qtqa