Category — Florida

From the Sun-Sentinel:

A new, obscure state agency that helps represent the poor in court has rented offices on posh Las Olas Boulevard and wants Broward County taxpayers to pick up the $416,000- a-year tab.

County commissioners, forced to reduce services to provide property tax relief, refuse to pay the rent and ordered their attorneys to join other counties in a lawsuit.

The Office of Criminal Conflict and Civil Regional Counsel handles criminal and civil cases in which public defenders have a conflict of interest. When legislators created the agency last year, they did not set aside money for office space; instead, they ordered counties to cover the expense.

The regional counsel’s local digs are in an eight-story building at Las Olas and Third Avenue, amid downtown Fort Lauderdale’s banks, shops and restaurants. The head of the agency told county officials he chose the location to put his staff within walking distance of the courthouse.

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From the Sarasota Herald-Tribune:

One of the few booming areas in these dismal economic times are courthouses, where an explosion of foreclosures are joining the sometimes mundane, sometimes volatile crush of divorces, contract disputes and criminal cases that are always increasing in Florida.

But despite the demand, budget cuts are forcing public defenders to drop cases, state attorneys to rely on more inexperienced lawyers and courts to eliminate hundreds of jobs.

State court officials earlier this year said they needed 61 new judges statewide to handle increased caseloads. Not only were those jobs not filled, circuit and appellate courts will lose 250 positions with more than 120 layoffs.

Despite Gov. Charlie Crist’s high profile push to join most of the country in automatically restoring civil rights to felons released from prison, the Florida Parole Commission’s budget was cut by 20 percent with a loss of 24 jobs. The commission had asked for 42 new hires to handle increased work.

Dozens of jobs in state attorney and public defender offices are being eliminated, falling most heavily on sections set aside for specific cases like sexual crimes and drug arrests.

Miami-Dade public defender Bennett Brummer said his office will decline most felony cases in order to make sure his office can adequately represent the others.

In Sarasota and Manatee counties, nearly two dozen staff positions at the State Attorney’s Office and Public Defender’s Office have been left vacant because of budget woes, bumping up caseloads for prosecutors and defense attorneys as they cover for their colleagues who retired or moved on to other positions.

Public Defender Elliott Metcalfe Jr. said his office could be forced to abandon the misdemeanor units, and reassign defense attorneys to felony cases, where the sanction of prison exceeds the punishment in misdemeanor cases.

…

Sen. Crist, no relation to the governor, said public defenders are angling for a lawsuit over inadequate legal representation that would force lawmakers to spend more for those offices.

“That’s what this is all about,” he said. “There is no need to shut down and deny access or service.”

But public defenders say that when rising caseloads are combined with smaller staffs, something has to give.

For example, the 20th Judicial Circuit, which covers Charlotte, Lee and Collier counties, has already lost one public defense attorney and will also see the loss of two investigators and support staff.

Last year, the circuit handled 49,214 cases. This year, caseloads are looking as though they will top 60,000, said Delroy Blake, financial manager for the office.

“Especially in these trying economic times, we have people being charged that would have no other option than to have a lawyer appointed by the public defender,” said Kathy Smith, public defender for the 20th Judicial Circuit.

“It’s a constitutional office and we will continue to provide services. Without it, it’s not the United States of America,” she said.

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From the Pensacola News Journal:

The Public Defender’s Office in Pensacola may begin turning away hundreds of poor clients who qualify for its services saying the office is understaffed, underfunded and overwhelmed with cases.

“We were already under-funded and under-budgeted before,” Public Defender Jack Behr said. “I’ve been on the phone all day with all of the other elected public defenders trying to figure out how to handle this.”

The revelation came days after public defenders in Miami-Dade and Broward counties said they would consider turning away thousands of felony cases saying they are unable to provide meaningful representation.

Behr, in his final year of a more than 30-year career as public defender, said in recent years, the tough-on-crime legislature has pinched public defender budgets as the crime rate climbs.

In the past two years, Behr said his office lost $895,000 from its budget and was forced to leave six positions unfilled. The office’s 2007-08 budget was more than $8.6 million.

Behr said he has considered turning cases away which would force judges to appoint private attorneys to handle the excess cases.

“It would cost them a lot more to pay private attorneys,” Behr said. “They’ve got the best deal around with public defenders. It costs about $195 per case and they’re paying private attorneys $500, $600, $700.”

Behr’s office has 53 attorneys on staff split between Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa and Walton counties. In a given year, his office handles 25,000 cases.

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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.

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From OCALA.com (FL):

The public defender for the 5th Judicial Circuit, Howard “Skipp” Babb, said his office has been working “feverishly” to avoid furloughing employees due to slashed funds from massive state budget cuts.

The Florida Legislature has all but formally approved an appropriations bill that will cut $540 million from its $70 billion state budget. Legislators are expected to pass the bill later this week.

“My management skills are being tested to keep people working,” Babb said.

In the face of a sagging housing market and declining state revenue, the Legislature is draining money from agencies to balance its budget this year. The judicial branch stands to lose $16 million, and has had to dip into its cash reserves to retrieve $10.5 million that will prevent people like judges, judicial assistants, court interpreters, and law clerks from taking mandatory leave from their jobs for the rest of the calendar year.

The State Attorney’s Office has bailed itself out under similar circumstances, yet the fate of the Public Defender’s Office is not in the clear just yet. Babb said the 5th Circuit, of which Marion County is part, must come up with $250,000 to avoid having to furlough employees between now and July 1, the start of the next budget year. He said the Legislature has even discussed moving money around from one circuit to another.

Reduced budgets are having a “ripple effect” throughout the entire court system, according to 5th Circuit Chief Judge Daniel B. Merritt, Sr.

“Caseloads are increasing despite the budgetary shortfall,” he said. “It affects the right of individuals that need to get into court, and get their situations resolved.”

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From the Palm Beach Post:

It’s supposed to save the state millions in spiraling costs and fees paid to private attorneys who represent poor defendants, but some local lawyers and judicial leaders have growing concerns about a new agency that will handle cases declined by public defender’s offices.

The legislature this year created a law that upended the way these cases - along with cases of child dependency and termination of parental rights involving poor parents - will be handled.

Supporters believe the new system will be more economical. But with a state deadline looming to have the agency up and running in January, lawyers from the Treasure Coast, Palm Beach County and elsewhere in Florida are becoming increasingly vocal about fears that not enough money has been allocated to it and that its lawyers will be stretched too thin.

The people ultimately left in the lurch, they argue, will be the poor defendants and parents.

“I think it’s an ill-thought-out law,” said Fort Pierce lawyer Dawn Kirk, who handles child dependency cases. “My main concern is whether these people will get competent representation. It will cost the state in the long run if the system fails. I want to be optimistic, but no one has given me reason to be.”

The five lawyers Gov. Charlie Crist appointed Aug. 22 to head the districts have a huge task: They must create their offices from the ground up in the next 21/2 months. Not only do they have to hire lawyers and a support staff, they have to acquire office space from the counties in their districts.

“When public defenders are elected, they walk into a turnkey operation,” said Philip Massa, a former assistant attorney general who will lead the regional office that serves Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast. “Everything is already set up. Same thing with state attorneys and judges.

“We have nothing. We are literally starting from scratch.”

Some counties are not happy about the law’s requirement that county taxpayers must bear the burden of providing office space and paying other facility costs.

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From the Herald-Tribune:

The state’s defense lawyer association has asked the Florida Supreme Court to block a new law that sets up a second tier of public attorneys to represent indigent criminal defendants.

Lawyers working for the five appointed criminal conflict and civil regional counsels will replace private attorneys that courts appoint when elected public defenders have a conflict of interest.

That typically happens when multiple defendants are charged in a single crime. The new offices also will provide legal representation in child dependency cases.

The Legislature created the system as a cheaper alternative to court-appointed lawyers because their costs have spiraled in recent years.

A. Russell Smith, president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which filed the challenge Thursday, acknowledged the state is looking for ways to cut spending due to a current-year revenue shortfall of $1.1 billion.

“They just picked a bad place to save a few bucks,” Smith said Friday. “You can’t scrimp on constitutional protection.”

The association, which includes public defenders and private defense lawyers, contends the new law violates a provision of the Florida Constitution that says public defenders must be elected and live in the judicial circuits they represent.

The five new regional counsels meet neither criteria, the association says. They are appointed by the governor, not elected, and work within each of the state’s five appellate districts rather than its 20 judicial circuits.

The association also argues it’s a conflict of interest for the executive branch to make the appointments because it also oversees state prosecutors.

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