The following is a guest post from one of the Summer Corps Standout winners, Michael Shaffer, who is working at The Michigan State Appellate Defender Office.  He is a student at the University of Michigan Law School.

The Michigan State Appellate Defender Office (SADO) handles 25 percent of felony appeals in the state and provides resources and training for the assigned counsel who handle the other 75 percent. SADO provides critical representation for those convicted of felonies in Michigan, because many counties in the state do not provide adequate trial counsel for poor defendants. The state ranks 44th out of 50 in per-capita spending on public defense, and its patchwork, county-funded system for providing counsel to poor defendants has been the subject of recent scathing reports by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The American Bar Association even used Michigan in a recent report as an extreme example of a state that has failed to provide constitutionally mandated criminal defense for the poor. Due to the intense attention this issue has received, the state has, after decades of neglect, finally turned its attention to fulfilling this mandate. The Michigan Court of Appeals recently issued an opinion allowing pending litigation over indigent defense to move forward, and the legislature started hearings in June 2009 on an initiative that would create a state-funded and -run dedicated public defender system.

I had the chance this summer to learn and use the wide range of tactics that SADO staff attorneys deploy in attacking unsound trial outcomes for their clients. In the direct appeal that I briefed, I searched the record for issues, researched the law, and mounted constitutional challenges to three major trial errors. One involved a state Court of Appeals holding from the late 1970s that allows expert testimony by police “K-9″ tracking dog handlers, and which Michigan courts have stubbornly refused to conform to modern rules on expert evidence. Another involved the trial court’s refusal to appoint an expert witness on eyewitness identification – a graphic demonstration of how the state systematically denies needed resources to defendants and their assigned counsel. I relied not only on established federal and state precedent in arguing these issues, but also on the latest in scientific and psychological research. I used these resources to go beyond dickering over points of law and to make a compelling argument that the courts must re-examine traditional – but deeply mistaken – beliefs about the scent tracking abilities of dogs and the vagaries of human memory and perception.

I also wrote a motion for resentencing, which I may have the opportunity to argue in the trial court before the summer ends, and I am now working on a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus, for a client who has exhausted all of her state rights of relief. I will not find out for perhaps a year how the Court of Appeals will decide the direct appeal that has consumed the largest part of my effort this summer. But after our first meeting with the client in that case, my supervising attorney told me she could tell that the client had renewed hope and confidence in our efforts to overturn her conviction and win her a new trial.

I knew about the criminal defense crisis in Michigan before I started this job, but weeks spent poring over an 800-page trial record have helped me appreciate the depth of the problems here in a way that statistics alone never could. Reading the line-by-line account of a court denying a defendant every resource and ruling that would allow her to mount a meaningful defense has given me a new appreciation for the challenges that the members of the Michigan defense bar face every day. I also gained a swift and thorough appreciation for the quick skills, keen judgment, and encyclopedic knowledge that trial lawyers exercise to effectively preserve issues for appeal. Reviewing a trial record piece by piece and developing the legal issues on significant errors has given me indispensable, practical insights into the rules of procedure and evidence. This insight will serve me well not only in the classroom during my second year of law school, but also in the courtroom next summer, as I plan to apply for an internship doing trial work with a public defender office.