SACRAMENTO Citing the 50th anniversary of the landmark Gideon v. Wainwright decision in a speech to the Legislature on Monday, Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye compared the effects of five years of budget cuts to the pre-Gideon practice of denying criminal defense lawyers to the poor.
"I worry that California is on the wrong side of history when it comes to its funding of justice," Cantil-Sakauye said in her second annual State of the Judiciary speech, delivered to a joint gathering of the state Assembly and Senate.
