Minnesota's debt-plagued public defender system is broken, leaving attorneys with less time to review evidence, research legal arguments and prepare witnesses -- and making it much more difficult for their clients to get a fair trial.
These findings were part of a new analysis written by MinnPost's Jeff Severns Guntzel and students in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
The story is the first of a number of stories SJMC students worked on in conjunction with MinnPost. The students were part of Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and editor Chris Ison's in-depth reporting class during the fall 2010 semester.
