Mississippi Supreme Court rules that the state's public defender system must be fixed to prevent defendants from spending unreasonable amounts of time before indictment

Poor defendants in Mississippi are routinely jailed for months, and sometimes even years, without being appointed an attorney due to the state’s inadequate public defender system. The Mississippi Supreme Court now says this practice must end.  The state’s highest recently rules that criminal defendants who can’t afford their own attorney must always have one before an indictment.  You can read the opinion here and a comment on the opinion here.