One of the most important measurements of how committed a nation is to human rights is how it treats those accused of a crime.

America, unfortunately, has not always lived up to its ideals.

While our system guarantees that everyone is innocent until proven guilty in an open court and that every accused person is entitled to legal counsel, our practice has often fallen short. When a person can’t afford their own lawyer, our system provides them an attorney who is overworked, underpaid, and forced to work in an environment that doesn’t always allow the most vigorous advocacy.

Innocent people sometimes go to jail.

That is why we support the work of the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission, which for the past several years has imposed Michigan’s first-ever standards to up the games of court-appointed attorneys and support those attorneys in their work.

The most recent standard adopted in Alpena, as News staff writer Julie Riddle recently reported, is removing from judges the task of appointing attorneys.

No matter how fair a judge and attorneys may be, the old setup often discouraged court-appointed attorneys from too harshly challenging a judge’s ruling, lest the attorney lose out on the next assignment.

We say thanks to the MIDC and to those, such as attorney Bill Pfeifer in Alpena, who are working to build a more just system that provides a fairer fight to those who can’t afford to fight on their own.

You are making this nation a better place.

(THE ALPENA NEWS)