Review by Choice Review
In an important (and troubling) empirical study that has significance well beyond New York City, Wasserman, a research scholar and former staff attorney with the local Legal Aid Society's Criminal Appeals Bureau (CAB), examines the comparative performance of New York's appellate defenders--the assigned counsel of the Appellate Division and the CAB--and, by implication, the state of appellate representation of indigent criminal defendants in the US since the US Supreme Court's decision in Douglas v. California (1963). Part 1 examines the impact of Douglas on the nature of appellate representation, on the appellate courts, and on the organization of defense services. Part 2 presents an empirical study of criminal appeals in New York City, assessing the quality and impact of local appellate defenders, the allocation of the indigent case load, and the grounds on which appellate counsel sometimes prevail. Part 3 examines the implications of this research for the analysis of indigent appellate defense developed in Part 1. An insightful, sophisticated, perceptive work that should be read (and pondered) by every US judge, attorney, and case worker who deals with the criminal justice system. Good footnotes; adequate bibliography. Graduate students. -F. W. Neuber, Western Kentucky University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
