Endowments; Public defenders; Legal assistance to the poor; New York (N.Y.); Legal Aid Society (New York, N.Y.). Voluntary Defenders' Committee; Embree, William Dean; Legal Aid Society (New York, N.Y.)
Format
correspondence
Genre
Business correspondence
Origin Information
1917
Physical Description
microfilm, 16 mm, b&w
digitized microfilm
Note (Reel no.)
Reel 85
Note
PDF may contain multiple grant documents.
William Dean Embree
The Voluntary Defenders' Committee was organized, as its Constitution states, 'to employ a staff of attorneys and investigators, who will offer their services to the criminal courts in cases where the law provides for the assignment of counsel to the, defendant, who will undertake the voluntary defense of needy and deserving persons accused of crime and who will assist others engaged in like efforts.' It began its work on April 1st, 1917, with offices at 57 Centre Street, in a building owned by the city, within three blocks of the Criminal Courts Building and the City Prison. The whole second floor of the building was assigned to the Committee free of charge by the city authorities. The Committee employs a staff of attorneys and investigators, who offer their services to the Criminal Courts in those cases where the law provides for the assignment of counsel. Some member of the office staff speaks one or more of the following named foreign languages: Italian, Yiddish, French, German, Hungarian, Bohemian (Czech), Polish, Russian, Ruthenian (Little Russian), and Slovak. The members of the staff serve on a salary basis and do no other work. The work of the Committee is confined to cases in the Court of General Sessions (felony cases triable by indictment) in the County of New York, this circumscription of field being made necessary by the limited size of the Committee's staff. Requests from public officials or organizations of high standing, however, have called the Committee's lawyers into a few cases of unusual merit in other courts, with the result that in three months we have handled four cases in Bronx County, two in Kings County, one in Richmond County and several cases in the City Magistrates' Courts and the Court of Special Sessions..." [SOURCE: Embree, William Dean. "The New York 'Public Defender.'" Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol. 8, no. 4, 1918, pp. 554-555. Northwestern University School of Law, https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/vol8/iss4/8/. Accessed 24 Oct. 2018.]
Language
English
Library Location
Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University