Right to State Appointed Counsel in Criminal Case: The Constitutional Requirements and the Issue of Its Implementation in Sidama Zone and Hawassa City Courts

Abstract

To preserve cherished principles of democracy in adversary criminal procedures, many democratic states provide for right to hired or state appointed counsel to strike balance between law ignorant defendant and law expert prosecutor. The FDRE constitution also provides for right of indigents to state appointed counsel without further details about its implementation, which resulted in varied practices in determining indigence, nature of eligible cases and time of representation. This study, therefore, was conducted with the view of investigating status of its implementation, the constitutional requirements and how such requirements, including the time of representation are treated by courts. To this effect, the research has adopted mixed approach with interview and analysis of dead files as major data collection tools from selected courts. Combined results show courts apply flexible criteria to determine indigence, but with limited cases of and no pretrial state appointed representation, thereby high likelihood for miscarriage of justice.