Gov. Code, § 15421 · Chapter 2. Duties and Powers
Gov. Code, § 15421
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
The State Public Defender is authorized to represent any person who is not financially able to employ counsel in the following matters:
(a) An automatic appeal to the Supreme Court under Section 11 of Article VI of the California Constitution and subdivision (b) of Section 1239 of the Penal Code.
(b) A petition for a writ of certiorari to the United States Supreme Court with respect to a judgment on the automatic appeal to the Supreme Court under Section 11 of Article VI of the California Constitution and subdivision (b) of Section 1239 of the Penal Code.
(c) An appeal in a noncapital, criminal case as long as the State Public Defender is fulfilling the responsibilities to provide representation imposed pursuant to subdivisions (a) and (b), or the State Public Defender determines that taking a limited number of those cases is necessary for staff training.
(d) Any other proceeding in which a person is entitled to representation at public expense where providing this representation is in furtherance of the State Public Defender’s primary responsibilities, as set forth in Section 15420, or to address legal claims that impact the resolution of death penalty cases.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Amended by Stats. 2020, Ch. 29, Sec. 8. (SB 118) Effective August 6, 2020.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=GOV§ionNum=15421.
- Text hash
- sha256 5531c08485fa62b32f86476799c6de75905edff7bb4ff23af3671ba35544b471
- Composed by
- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
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