The digital turn in public criminal defense

This dissertation studies the digital turn in public criminal defense. It focuses on public defenders, who are court-appointed attorneys, and their indigent clients, who come primarily from minority populations. I argue that the defining feature of the digital turn is that it brings judicial actors into contact with increasingly personal parts of defendants’ lives. As part of handling cases, both the prosecution and the defense interact with photos, conversation records, and location information, and use these pieces of digital evidence to understand the people, events, and circumstances around alleged crimes. I situate my study at the intersection of communication scholarship, socio-legal studies, and critical race theory. I draw on the latter’s legal storytelling framework to help make sense of how public defenders and prosecutors use digital evidence to create competing narratives about poor defendants and their alleged crimes. To examine the digital turn in public criminal defense, I conducted an ethnographic study of a public defender office and its in-house, digital forensics laboratory. The goal was to understand how digital evidence is shaping criminal case processing, especially defense work, and the relationship between public defenders and their indigent clients. I developed an original framework called the “life cycle.” This framework makes an important contribution to socio-legal studies and scholarship in the area of communication and technology by presenting a process-oriented approach that allows scholars and legal practitioners to understand how different moments in the life of a case unfold in the digital turn. Using the life cycle approach, I trace the life of digital evidence in public criminal defense, from the evidence’s arrival in the public defender office to its eventual application during hearings, plea negotiations, and trials. Throughout the analysis, I highlight the challenges and opportunities public defenders experience in the digital turn.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference