State public defender cuts imperil us all

From TwinCities.com:

The bastard child of American jurisprudence is taking another rap to the knuckles. Life is unfair. So what else is new?

We’re talking here about public defenders for indigent criminal defendants. They are an overworked, underpaid, misunderstood and much-maligned lot. Could be those two words — indigent and criminal — that put most of us off. It’s human nature.

Yet without these attorneys, the lofty ideal of “justice for all” — or constitutionally mandated due process for the have-nots as well as the haves — is pretty much a farce. It was announced last week that 72 state-funded public defender positions would be eliminated in Minnesota because the state’s public defender system faces a $3.8 million deficit following legislative budget cuts.

The job cuts made some news buzz. Then we collectively turned to more interesting and most-read serious news tidbits, like actress Tori (Tori who?) Spelling giving birth to a second child and naming the kid Stella.

Stella, Stella. Ever heard the name Gideon, a name that changed the legal landscape in this nation more than four decades ago? The anticipated cuts come on the 45th anniversary of the landmark 1963 Supreme Court decision ruling that everyone in America — both the haves but notably the have-nots — have the right to have a lawyer defend them in a criminal case. Of course, the decision in Gideon v. Wainwright made no mention at all about how this concept would be funded.

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That will also affect the willingness or the memory of witnesses or victims to a crime, particularly in cases where DNA or scientific evidence is nonexistent.

Indeed, the decision in Gideon v. Wainwright has proven to be mostly a toothless tiger, given cultural attitudes.

Public defenders continue to lobby for funding scraps year in and year out while funding for prosecutors and the judiciary remains relatively constant and generally rides the ebb and flow of state budget revenue streams.

That disparity is also much reinforced by TV and Hollywood depictions that prosecutors are good and defense lawyers are conniving shysters willing to do anything to get their client off.

Of course, reality puts quite a damper on such thoughts.

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Ramsey County Chief Public Defender Jim Hankes told me in 2004, in the midst of another round of proposed cuts, that this state of funding affairs is far more normal than the exception.

“Though the (state) Legislature has been generous in recent years, things really don’t change,” said Hankes, who will have to make do with a 25 percent manpower reduction in his 48-member staff by the end of the summer. Right now, each attorney in his office handles about 700 criminal misdemeanor and felony cases annually. The cuts will likely drive up that caseload to more than 800. Public defenders represent most defendants in Minnesota, including 85 percent of those accused of felonies and half of those accused of misdemeanors.

“There are favorite children, but we are not one of them,” Hankes said of who gets the bulk of the funding in this legal triumvirate.

It will change when the American public realizes that those accused of crimes are not “those people,” but more often their neighbors or relatives.

For now, assembly-line justice in the nation that is the undisputed world leader in incarceration of its own people is the accepted norm.

This is not solely a Minnesota problem. In fact, this state enjoys a national reputation for having one of the best, if imperfect, public defense systems in the nation.

Chicago and New York are drowning in public-defense woes. Miami’s public defenders recently decided to deal exclusively with death penalty cases because they don’t have the funds to deal with less-serious cases. You will find similar woes in most areas.

So, who cares? We all should, because it will cost us dollars in cases delayed, and ultimately wrongful-conviction lawsuits.

In the end, it’s the fairness and confidence in the system that should be paramount. It’s what used to make us unique. We lose this, we lose our standing, if not our idealistic soul and compass.

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