Public defender says budget cuts will hurt court system

From the Palm Beach Post:

Palm Beach County’s criminal justice system is in crisis as arrest rates soar and legislators are set to slash millions to the lawyers and court system that must process the cases, State Attorney Barry Krischer said Thursday.

Krischer, speaking before a group from Leadership Palm Beach County, depicted the 10 percent budget cut currently bandied about by legislators as an inevitability.

“On July 1, I will not be able to make payroll in my office without laying off an additional 12 attorneys,” Krischer told the group.

Already, he has dismantled four key specialized units in his office which prosecuted economic crimes, crimes against children and the elderly and felony domestic violence cases. Those highly specialized prosecutors, who understood sophisticated DNA techniques for rape cases or forensic accounting for fraud cases, have been reassigned to help cover the crush of filed crimes, expected to hit 20,000 this year, he said.

“I cannot provide public safety. I cannot adequately represent victims if I don’t have trained, experienced lawyers in the courtroom and they are slowly but surely moving out of the office,” Krischer said.

Public Defender Carey Haughwout also spoke of the budget cut’s impact her office, which provides lawyers for the poor. Haughwout portended at some point this year standing up in court and refusing to accept new cases. She has a constitutional and ethical duty to do so, she said.

“I can’t have a lawyer handling 200 or 300 felony cases. That’s a joke to say that’s effective representation. We’re not going to cover-up and just make do,” Haughwout said.

The current budget cut will eliminate substance abuse education and treatment in prison, where as much as 80 percent of crimes committed are related to drugs, she said. “It’s nuts as far as I’m concerned.”

A full third of the crimes in felony courts today were misdemeanors a decade ago, she said, including some drivers license crimes. Florida now leads the nation in per capita incarceration, she said. “We have this system in place, and we cannot afford it anymore,” she said.

Read the entire story