What is America's defense system?

The concept of effective defense is not clearly defined in the US Constitution. The federal constitution of the United States only stipulates that the defendant has the right to get the help of a lawyer. The concept of effective defense mainly comes from the application of the constitution by the court. The core content of effective defense means that in criminal proceedings, in order to ensure the basic function of adversarial litigation mode, the help provided by lawyers must meet the general practice standards for defendants, otherwise the judgment made by the court will be revoked. The essence of effective defense system is that the law protects lawyers' right to help clients by regulating the behavior of lawyers and the state.

Effective defense can be divided into procedural effective defense and lawyer effective defense in essence. The former means that lawyers' defense is restricted by judicial organs or other external factors, while the latter means that lawyers cannot provide substantive and effective defense in the course of litigation due to their own reasons. Because procedural effective defense does not involve the specific performance of lawyers in criminal proceedings, its judgment standard is relatively simple, and the Federal Supreme Court first dealt with this issue. As early as Powell v. Alabama [3], the Federal Supreme Court held that one of the prerequisites for the effectiveness of the procedure of appointing lawyers is that the participating lawyers have sufficient time and opportunities to prepare their defense, which established the rule that the court shall not hinder lawyers from effectively defending.

Since then, the Federal Supreme Court has listed a series of cases in which the defense procedure is invalid, such as: the court restricts the defendant from testifying for the defense [4] (Brooks v. Tennessee), the court may not deprive the lawyer of the right to end the defense during the trial [5] (Herring v. new york), the court may not prevent the defendant from consulting the lawyer intermittently in direct or cross-examination [6] (Kitts v. the United States), and the court may not appoint a lawyer who lacks professional qualifications.

The only standard of procedural invalid defense is that the lawyer's right to defense is seriously interfered by the state, and this interference is intentional by the state. The effective defense of lawyers is complicated in nature, because it involves the defense level of lawyers and the influence on the trial results. The author mainly makes a concrete analysis from two standards: defense defect and damage result.