The Attorney General ended his remarks with:

Let me end by going back to first principles.  Justice Black, the author of Gideon, himself came from very humble origins.  He was born in poor, rural Harlan, Kentucky, and he often referred to himself as “just a Clay County hillbilly.”  Yet he was one of the most eloquent spokespersons for equal justice in our nation’s history.  Twenty years before Gideon, he made his principled dissent in the Betts case.  He said: “A practice cannot be reconciled with common and fundamental ideas of fairness and right which subjects men to increased dangers of conviction merely because of their poverty.”  Two decades would pass before that principle found a place in his opinion for the majority of the Court in Gideon.  Justice Black must have felt great frustration in those 20 years between Betts and Gideon, but progress eventually came with time and perseverance. 

Another 45 years have passed since Gideon, and the promise of Gideon remains not fully fulfilled.  It’s our responsibility to continue to work toward realizing the principle that Justice Black described and worked for.  Justice shall not be done until we do.  I look forward to working with all of you.

Complete Text of Eric Holder's Remarks to ACCD

To provide each client with high quality services through an effective delivery system, which ensures a defender staff dedicated to the interests of their clients and the improvement of the criminal justice system.

The Department of Public Advocacy is an independent agency attached for administrative purposes to the Justice and Public Safety Cabinet headed by J. Michael Brown, Secretary. DPA is the statewide public agency providing public defender service in all of Kentucky's 120 counties as will as Kentucky's appellate courts.

A half century ago the Kentucky Supreme Court held that "common justice demands" that an attorney must be appointed when a person charged with a felony is too poor to hire his own counsel. Gholson v. Commonwealth, 212 S.W.2d 537 (Ky. 1948). In the 1960s Kentucky attorneys began to request compensation when they were forced to represent indigents charged with a crime. In 1963, the United States Supreme Court determined that if a state wants to take away a person's liberty, it has to provide an attorney to those persons too poor to hire their own in order to comply with the Federal Constitution. Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963). While consistently unsuccessful in convincing Kentucky's highest Court that the judiciary could and should order payment, Kentucky's appointed attorneys did persuade the Kentucky Supreme Court to the point that the Court began to directly encourage the General Assembly to provide a systematic solution for paying the attorneys who were being made to represent the accused

On September 22, 1972, Kentucky's highest Court characterized the forced representation of indigents as an "intolerable condition" and held it was an unconstitutional taking of an attorney's property - his service to the client - without compensation. From then on no Kentucky attorney could be required to represent an indigent absent compensation. Bradshaw v. Ball, 487 S.W.2d 294 (Ky. 1972).

While the appeal in Bradshaw was pending, the 1972 Legislature, at the request of Governor Wendell Ford, created the Office of Public Defender, now the Department of Public Advocacy (DPA), and gave it the responsibility to represent all persons in Kentucky charged with or convicted of a crime. House Bill 461 sponsored by Representatives Kenton, Graves and Swinford passed the House 60-18 on March 7, 1972 and the Senate 26-5 on March 14, 1972. It allocated $1,287,000 for FY 73 and FY 74.