In America’s fiercely adversarial legal system, a good lawyer is essential. Ask O.J. Simpson. In a landmark case 35 years ago, Gideon v. Wainwright, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that indigent defendants must be provided with a lawyer at state expense because there could be no fair trial in a serious criminal case without one. "This seems to us to be an obvious truth," wrote Justice Hugo Black in his opinion. At the time, the decision was hailed as a triumph for justice, an example of America’s commitment to the ideal of equality before the law.
This is the image most Americans still have of their criminal-justice system -- the fairest in the world, in which any defendant, no matter how, gets a smart lawyer who, too often, manages to get the culprit off on a technicality. Nothing could be further from the truth. About 80% of people accused of a felony have to depend on a publicly-provided lawyer; but over the past two decades the eagerness of politicians to look harsh on crime, their reluctance to pay for public defenders, and a series of Supreme Court judgments restricting the grounds for appeal have made a mockery of Gideon. Today many indigent defendants, including those facing long terms of imprisonment or even death, are treated to a "meet’em and plead’em " defense -- a brief consultation in which a harried or incompetent lawyer encourages them to plead guilty or, if that fails, struggle through a short trial in which the defense is massively outgunned by a more experienced, better-paid and better-prepared prosecutor.
"We have a wealth-based system of justice," says Stephen Bright, the director of the Southern Center for Human Right. "For the wealthy, it’s gold-plated. For the average poor person, it’s like being herded to the slaughterhouse. In many places the adversarial system barely exists for the poor."
Many lawyers, of course, have made heroic efforts for particular defendants for little or no pay, but the charity of lawyers can be relied on to handle only a tiny fraction of cases. As spending on police, prosecutors and prisons has steadily climbed in the past decade, increasing the number of people charged and imprisoned, spending on indigent defense has not kept pace, overwhelming an already hard-pressed system.
It can be inferred from the passage that O.J. Simpson was probably______
A. a person who was found not guilty because he hired a very good lawyer
B. a person who won his case because he was provided with a lawyer at state expense
C. A person who was denied a lawyer and thus lost his case in the court
D. a brilliant lawyer who won numerous cases for the average poor people
