State’s public defender overhaul earns kudos

From the Great Falls Tribune (Montana):

Two years after Montana overhauled its system for defending the poor in court — partly in response to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit — state officials and ACLU leaders say they’ve seen a major improvement.

“I think Montana is actually viewed as a model nationwide for how reforms can be effected,” said Robin Dahlberg, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU, which is based in New York.

“In the more populated areas we have heard again and again that there is a consistent quality of representation that didn’t exist before — that there is a more level playing field between defendants and prosecutors,” she said.

The ACLU filed suit in 2002 against Montana and seven of its counties. At that time, each of the state’s 56 counties had a different system for defending people who were accused of crimes but couldn’t afford to hire an attorney.

The ACLU agreed to suspend the suit while Montana’s Legislature worked to revise the system, and the state officially took control of the public defender system in July 2006. The new organization is headed by Chief Public Defender Randi Hood out of an office in Butte. She oversees 11 regions, each headed by regional deputy public defenders.

Most regions have a staff of full-time public defenders and contract with private attorneys as necessary.

Montana Supreme Court justices have been pleased with the change, said Justice Patricia O’Brien Cotter.

“All of us pretty much agree that the new system is a substantial improvement over the old system,” she said. “The district judges with whom we’ve spoken have been pretty uniformly impressed.”

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