The Supreme Court ruled today that Roberto Miranda, a former death row inmate later determined to be innocent of the crime may sue the public defender's office for its alleged mishandling of the case. The case is Clark County v. Miranda, 02-1629.

Central to the case are the policies of this defender office:

Miranda's lawyers claim that the office routinely gave lie detector tests to new clients, and then used the results to decide how vigorous the client's defense would be. Miranda, a black native Spanish speaker from Cuba, also claims whites and members of the Mormon church got better legal help than minorities and non-Mormons.

Miranda claims he was given a county-paid lawyer, Thomas Rigsby, who had been on the job barely a year and had never tried a capital case. Miranda claims Rigsby asked him to take a lie detector test, which was administered by an English-speaking examiner. The examiner concluded that Miranda failed the test.

"Thereafter, Rigsby did virtually nothing to prepare for Mr. Miranda's trial," Miranda's lawyers said in papers filed with the Supreme Court.

We wrote a long analysis of the case back in February, available here.

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