The absurd Catch-22 at the heart of Kowalski v. Tesmer.
Last month, in a little-noticed decision, the United States Supreme Court dealt a serious blow to indigent defendants around the country. Kowalski v. Tesmer, though seemingly a case about standing (the majority refused to decide the merits of the case by deciding that the lawyers who brought it weren't properly before the court), functionally allows the state of Michigan to continue the practice of denying appellate lawyers to most poor people who plead guilty.
Michigan is the only state in the nation that does this. Looking to decrease its appellate backlog, Michigan figured that since most indigent people wouldn't know the first thing about how to raise a winning appeal, if the state took away their lawyers, fewer of them would actually get to court. Guess what? They were right.
Details in this interesting piece from David Feige of Slate. (via How Appealing)