This Article maps legal conceptions of (in)equality onto the socio-geographic
conception of spatial inequality in relation to the funding and provision of indigent
defense services in the State of Arizona. In particular, we examine county-tocounty
variations in funding and structures for providing this constitutionally
mandated service. Our analysis focuses on disparities in funding among five
Arizona counties, and we also scrutinize those counties’ provision of indigent
defense for several problems commonly associated with underfunding: caseloads
and competency, financial conflicts of interest, lack of parity with prosecution, and
the risk that a single case will overwhelm a county’s defense system. Despite some
gaps in publicly available information detailing the funding and provision of
indigent defense across all Arizona counties—information that could be developed
through discovery should litigation be initiated—we argue that evidence of countyto-
county variations in funding and delivering indigent defense is sufficient to
suggest that the systems of some Arizona counties are at risk of violating the U.S.
Constitution’s Sixth Amendment right to counsel and Fourteenth Amendment
Equal Protection Clause.
