Indigent legal defense system to get overhaul

From The Herald (SC):

South Carolina’s patchwork system that provides attorneys to defendants who can’t afford them is undergoing a multimillion-dollar transformation — one that advocates say is long overdue.

More than eight in 10 of nearly 126,000 cases heard in the state’s general sessions courts last year involved defendants unable to afford a lawyer, according to the S.C. Administrative Office of the Courts.

In some rural counties, the percentage of defendants represented by public defenders is as high as 95 percent, said Patton Adams, executive director of the S.C. Commission on Indigent Defense.

Indigent defense is important because each person charged with a crime has the constitutional right to adequate representation.

The revision of the 30-year-old indigent defense law did away with the nonprofits, creating public defender positions in each judicial circuit. The new jobs are on par in pay and benefits with prosecutors, and the new defense lawyers — like prosecutors — are state employees.

The new system is designed to provide accountability both for money and the quality of representation that defendants get, to help get crowded trial schedules moving and to improve recruitment and retention of public defenders. It is being rolled out over a two-year period.

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