Category — Georgia

From the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer:

Georgia’s cash-strapped public defender system, which already struggles to pay a growing backlog of legal fees, could be faced with a new round of bills stemming from a case under review by the state’s top court.

The arguments before the Georgia Supreme Court on Monday focused on who should pick up the tab for a Burke County death penalty case. But the public defender system solemnly warned that the court’s ruling could lead to more fees that could end in “financial jeopardy.”

“This case could have a much broader impact,” said Mack Crawford, the system’s director, after the arguments.

It’s the latest challenge facing the beleaguered public defender network, which has been a target of frustrated legislators almost since it took effect in 2005.

The gaudy defense bills for the trial of courthouse gunman Brian Nichols – which may have topped $2 million – became a rallying cry for deep cuts even before the state grappled with a $2.2 billion deficit.

Now the department, like other state agencies, is bracing for a new round of cuts as it seeks to shed about 10 percent of its budget. And the outcome of this case could determine whether the system is on the hook for a slew of bills it hasn’t budgeted.

The case stems from the trials of Willie Palmer, who was convicted of murder in the 1995 deaths of his estranged wife and 15-year-old stepdaughter. An appeals court ordered a new trial in March 2005, and the council’s former director said the state would pick up the tab.

Palmer was again convicted and sentenced to death in 2007. But his attorneys, Michael Garrett and Randolph Frails, were told the county should pay the costs when they submitted their $68,000 bill to the council.

In court on Monday, council attorney Judson Turner warned the judges it is only authorized to pay for new death penalty cases after it was established in 2005, not existing or past cases.

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From The Gainsville Times:

Faced with a growing indigent defense bill where costs were once much lower, Hall County State Court officials want to improve how they provide lawyers for the poor in 2009.

But while “improvement of delivery of indigent defense services” is a stated goal for state court this year, it’s likely to be more of a fine tuning than a wholesale revision of the system.

Hall County’s Public Defender Office was created in 2005 to represent poor defendants in felony cases prosecuted in superior court, but state court judges still appoint lawyers from a panel of about 30 area criminal defense attorneys who are paid by the hour. In recent years, their workload and billing both have gone up dramatically.

Six years ago, 848 cases in state court had court-appointed attorneys paid by taxpayer money. In the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision and a loosening of indigent guidelines, that number increased at a greater rate than the rise in criminal case loads, peaking in fiscal year 2006-07 with nearly 3,000 cases with attorneys appointed for indigent defendants charged with misdemeanors.

In fiscal year 2007-08, Hall County spent $742,000 paying attorneys to represent people in 2,377 misdemeanor criminal cases.

The right of poor criminal defendants to have an attorney provided at taxpayer expense was once largely reserved for felony cases or serious misdemeanor crimes that carried a real threat of jail time.

But in 2002, the Supreme Court’s decision in Alabama v. Shelton reaffirmed the constitutional right to counsel for all criminal defendants facing even a remote possibility of jail time. Now, officials say, defendants facing such minor charges as speeding or failure to yield in a traffic accident are applying for, and getting, court-appointed attorneys who are paid $60 an hour in court and $50 an hour outside of court, with a $1,000 cap.

The average cost for representing an indigent defendant in state court in fiscal year 2007-08 was $312.

One change that has been seriously considered is shifting the duties of state court indigent defense to the public defender office, which might get the job done cheaper and more efficiently. But that would require hiring more lawyers and providing more office space.

In the current economic climate, Forrester said, “I don’t think we could recommend to anyone creating another level of bureaucracy to support government.”

Proponents of the current appointed attorney system note that state court provides a good training ground for young members of the criminal defense bar that would not exist if the public defender’s office moved in.

Said Wynne, “While we certainly try to improve upon the system we have, there are a lot of good things about it. We have a lot of good attorneys interested in doing defense work who do a good job. Yes, there are costs associated. They are subject to going up with the case numbers and with the revenue going up.”

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• In Miami-Dade County, Florida, Carlos J. Martinez will be sworn in as the county’s new top Public Defender today.He’ll be the first  Cuban-American to hold that office.
• Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, Chief Public Defender Charles T. Jones, Jr., is a candidate for county judge. (At $160k/year, I’m betting the judge position pays better than the PD gig.)
• The wife of a Mendocino County, California, public defender was arrested in Utah Saturday with 162 pounds of marijuana in the back of her pickup. As a Utah State Trooper observed, “It’s a lot of marijuana.” The public defender, Bert Schlosser, ran unsuccessfully for District Attorney in 2007. (Maybe that’s what he gets for trying to switch sides. On the plus side, the given reason for the stop looks pretty thin. Since when is crossing the fog line reasonable suspicion?)
• A Georgia legislator has proposed a bill to move control of the state’s public defender system from the Public Defender Standards Council to the Director of the system. (Can anyone out there in the trenches comment? Would this be a good or bad thing for indigent defense in GA?)
• San Francisco public defenders are opposing a plan to create “drug-free zones” in which cops with only a “reasonable belief” that two or more people are congregating to use or deal drugs would be authorized to order those people to disperse or be arrested. (What would such people be charged with? Failure to disperse in a drug-free zone?)
• New Jacksonville, Florida, public defender, Matt Shirk, continues to create controversy by continuing to fire public defenders. Shirk is the guy who promised during his campaign “not to oppose funding cuts to the office he was running for, and a
  promise to squeeze as much money as possible out of indigent
  defendants, including a proposal for the postponed billing of acquitted
  defendants who might later be able to find some employment.” He’s also been accused of promising the Fraternal Order of Police that his office would not raise questions about the integrity of policemen. As Mark Bennett noted, ” I hope we see bar grievances, disbarment, and disgrace in Mr. Shirk’s future.” More interesting thoughts on Shirk here.

What else? Comments always welcome…

From law.com:

As state budgets in Florida and Georgia are slashed, their criminal justice systems are taking a hit.

Hundreds of prosecutors and assistant public defenders in Georgia and Florida are facing one-day-a-month furloughs — forced unpaid leave — through the end of the year. Both states appear to be suffering from the same malady — a catastrophic reduction in tax revenue due to the housing meltdown. Georgia’s budget shortfall is estimated at $1.6 billion and Florida’s, $1.2 billion.

Georgia public defenders appear to have dodged a bullet, at least for now. Last month, the state Public Defender Standards Council had defiantly refused to accept its share of the 6 percent state budget cut. Then the board, which oversees the public defenders, put forth a plan calling for furloughs of at least one day a month for all staff. At a recent meeting, facing protests, the council voted to allow the 43 public defenders to make their own decisions on how to make spending cuts in their offices.

Those cuts cannot include layoffs, said C. Wilson DuBose, council chairman, and will likely mean furloughs of some kind. The offices have until late October to make the spending-cut decisions, he said.

“We are trying to avoid layoffs above all else,” he said. “I think a lot of offices probably will have to implement furloughs.”

Joe Saia, a public defender in Fayetteville, Ga., said he is thrilled that furloughs are off the table.

“I feel great about it,” Saia said. “It would have been really, really tough to tell someone they took a job without a lot of money, with a lot of extra work and extra sensitivity, and now they are not going to get paid one day a month. That was going to be awful.”

In Florida, only two offices have had to implement furloughs, at least so far.

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Yikes. Poor GA lawyers. From the local Fox affiliate:

Georgia’s struggling public defender system has begrudgingly agreed to slash its budget, but defiant members say they will also search for ways to mount a legal challenge.

The system’s decision on Wednesday comes two weeks after leaders angrily defied Gov. Sonny Perdue’s order to cut the program’s budget by 6 percent. The extent of the cuts won’t be decided until later this month, but it could require employee furloughs and other reductions.

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From the Macon Telegraph:

Defense attorneys were among the loudest supporters of Georgia’s ambitious public defender program, which for the first time created a statewide network of full-time attorneys to represent Georgia’s poor.

Which may explain why several of Georgia’s most prominent defense attorneys were in court Thursday, urging a Fulton County judge to prevent the ailing system from firing four full-time attorneys and replacing them with contract staff.

To those critics, the move could set an “unconscionable” precedent that threatens to undermine the program’s mission by slipping back to the much-maligned system of contract attorneys that once represented Georgia’s indigent.

“This is not about the right of lawyers to have a job,” said Stephen Bright, director of the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights. “It’s about the right of clients to be represented.”

But the system’s administrators, who have long argued that their hands are tied by budget cuts, say firing permanent attorneys and replacing them with private sector staffers is a necessary reality in a tough economy.

“It’s sad for the four lawyers who got laid off. It’s certainly unfortunate,” said Devon Orland, a state attorney. “But in this state, there’s no right to have a job.”

Fulton Superior Court Judge Melvin Westmoreland is expected to rule in the case next week.

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From the Florida Times-Union:

Georgia’s ailing public defender system, once praised as a national model for providing legal representation to poor defendants, is now in a legal tug-of-war with critics who say it has failed to live up to its promise.

Lagging support from Georgia legislators and rounds of budget cuts have already led the system’s director to scale back programs and fire dozens of staffers. But it was the decision in June to close the 21-member Metro Atlanta Conflict Defender Office that triggered the legal battle.

Critics sued the system’s director. They will ask a Fulton County judge today to force the office to stay open, arguing that the system is undergoing a “Walmartization” by firing full-time attorneys and replacing them with contract attorneys.

“This would be a giant step back to what is supposed to be a bygone era in Georgia,” said Stephen Bright, director of the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, which filed the legal challenge.

It’s a painful fall for the public defender system, hailed in legal circles as groundbreaking when it was created in 2003 to replace the patchwork of systems across Georgia’s 159 counties.

To defense attorneys and their traditional Democratic allies, it was a progressive way to guarantee standard legal representation to Georgia’s neediest for the first time. It also appealed to Georgia’s ruling Republicans by offering a way to avoid what legal experts said could be a costly federal challenge.

Under the old system, some counties assigned indigent defense cases to attorneys with little experience or knowledge of criminal defense. And lawmakers heard horror stories about defendants waiting days – even weeks – before seeing an attorney.

Since the statewide system was established, however, frustrated legislators who worried about financial mismanagement have sought to rein it in. They cut funding from $42 million to $35 million over the past three years.

“Left unchecked, it will continue to grow into another unaccountable burgeoning state bureaucracy and the taxpayers will be left holding an empty bag,” said state Sen. Preston Smith, who chairs his chamber’s judiciary committee.

The budget cuts have forced some belt tightening. About 40 staffers were fired amid the first round of cuts in May 2007, and system director Mack Crawford – himself a former state legislator – warned he would have to furlough hundreds of staffers until a fresh infusion of cash came in this March.

Crawford has said he had little choice but to close the metro conflict office, which handles multi-defendant cases, and fire its 16 lawyers and five investigators. The council received $5.4 million from the state for conflict cases – a drop from the $9 million it spent last year on similar cases.

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From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The state public defender council’s board voted Friday to delay by a month the closing of a metro defender office amid concerns its elimination will compromise legal representation of the poor and disrupt Atlanta’s busiest courthouse.

By a 9-1 vote, the board voted to shut down the 21-employee Metro Conflict Defender Office on July 31, but hire back seven of the lawyers who work there. The office won’t be closed until the lawyers are hired and a plan is in place to make sure the transition goes as smoothly as possible. The seven lawyers will work in Fulton County offices.

Last month, Mack Crawford, director of the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council, ignited a firestorm of controversy when he announced the conflict office, which has 17 lawyers, would be closed on June 30. The board held its meeting Friday to either agree to that plan or figure out a compromise.

The metro conflict office costs $1.7 million a year to run and represents people in Fulton and DeKalb counties who cannot afford an attorney. The office’s lawyers represent co-defendants when conflict-of-interest rules allow a public defender to represent only one person.

Crawford said he had to close the office because of budgetary constraints that have hounded the council since it opened its doors four years ago. The council had asked the Legislature for $8.3 million for “conflict” cases, as well as for fees for expert witness, for the next fiscal year that begins July 1. But lawmakers approved $5.4 million.

During Friday’s meeting, held at the Lodge at Amicalola Falls State Park, the board agreed to move toward adopting a compromise that keeps some salaried defenders on payroll and saves the council $600,000.

Under the plan, six of the lawyers from the metro office will stay on and handle “complex” cases – the most serious felony offenses — in a dozen Fulton County courtrooms. An additional lawyer will handle juvenile cases.

Although the plan recommended that four private attorneys handle the less serious, non-complex cases on a contract basis, the board voted to try to find a way to avoid using lawyers who don’t work for the defender council.

The proposal was outlined to the council by Larry Schneider, the DeKalb Public Defender who is leaving that job at the end of the month to oversee conflict cases for the state defender council. DeKalb would receive $300,000 from the council to deal with its conflict case load, he said.

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From the Rome News-Tribune:

A civil rights group is trying to block the state’s public defender system from closing a 21-member office at the end of the month, which it says could leave as many as 1,800 defendants in the lurch.

The Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights filed a lawsuit Wednesday asking a Fulton County judge to block the closing of the Metro Atlanta Conflict Defender Office and the firing of its 16 lawyers and five investigators.

The lawsuit claims that public defender system director Mack Crawford had no plan for the 1,800 people who are now represented by the conflict office, which handles multi-defendant cases.

“Many of the people accused have been in jail since their arrests and now will remain there even longer,” said Stephen Bright, the director of the civil rights group. “Removal of their counsel is unfair and prejudicial to their cases. It is unconscionable.”

Crawford and other council officials did not immediately return requests for comment.

But he has said budget cuts forced him to close down the office, which handles multi-defendant cases. The council only received $5.4 million from state lawmakers for the next fiscal year — a drop from the $9 million it spent last year on conflict cases throughout Georgia.

“We’ve been told repeatedly, ’You need to live within this budget,”’ Crawford said Tuesday at a hastily called meeting on the firings, where he also vowed to arrange counsel for the office’s defendants.

“There will be no compromise for the representation of these clients,” he said.

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From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The Georgia Legislature created a new statewide public defender system in 2003 to fulfill its constitutional obligation to provide an adequate criminal defense for indigents. However, there is a raging ideological debate between advocates and taxpayers over the meaning of an “adequate defense” that dramatically impacts the policy, structure and funding of the system.

Unfortunately, the Public Defenders’ Council has used its budget to usurp the policy-making authority of the Legislature by driving up the system’s costs and providing the best defense that money can buy. This limits the system’s availability and effectiveness and makes death penalty cases like Brian Nichols’ prohibitively expensive.

Since its inception, the state’s contribution has risen from 10 percent to approximately 40 percent of the total costs. Total expenditures for indigent defense in Georgia have reached $107 million, almost double the amount spent in 2000.

The recent downsizing of staff is not indicative of the failure of the Legislature to fund a system. To the contrary, it is evidence that the advocates have overbuilt a system which does more than required by the statutes.

The Council has built a system around the concept of maximizing the expenditure of available money rather than creating one that efficiently delivers the services called for by the Legislature. After perennially busting its budget, the Council manufactures a crisis and returns to the Legislature with threats of dire consequences if it does not receive additional funds. This strategy has the effect of forcing elected officials to increase funding or face a complete loss of a public service. It has resulted in a dramatic budget growth as compared with other state agencies.

Since 2005, state funds to the Council have increased 36 percent. In comparison, state funds to the Department of Human Resources increased 23 percent.

During the last legislative session, the Senate conducted a “zero-base budget” to determine the level of funding required for the system based upon what is mandated by statute. Even after repeated requests for the Council to produce a ground-up budget to justify their spending, they still refuse to do so, choosing instead only to criticize the Legislature without offering any alternative.

The Council and its staff have consistently misinformed the Legislature and the governor’s office.

Although they now acknowledge their mistake, the Council made a decision to declare a conflict of interest in a massive number of cases and outsource those cases to private attorneys, who bill the state by the hour for their services.

In fiscal year 2008, the Council came to the General Assembly with a midyear budgetary shortfall of $3.6 million. The Council very publicly insisted that this was due to the more than 9,045 pipeline “conflict” cases. While the Council was successful in convincing the executive branch and House of Representatives that these funds were needed, the Senate insisted on verification. Such requests went unanswered.

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From WGST:

Georgia’s public defender council is laying off 16 attorneys and five staff members to help deal with budget cuts.

The Georgia Public Defender Standards Council told the employees Friday that they would be cut June 30. That means nearly 1,900 defendants who can’t afford legal help will have no lawyer to represent them.

The affected employees were from the Metro Conflict Office, which helps with multidefendant cases. The council spent $9 million but was only allocated $5.4 million from the state this year.

Council director Mack Crawford says the group has been instructed not to go over its budget this year.

From the Providence, RI Examiner:

Three years after a deadly courthouse shooting rampage, the victims’ families have yet to see justice served, the suspect’s murder trial is mired in funding questions and appeals appear likely if the accused killer is ultimately convicted.

Brian Nichols sits in a jail cell, awaiting a murder trial that has been continuously delayed because of problems paying for his defense. Relatives of the four people Nichols is charged with killing on March 11, 2005, also wait for an end to a case that remains an unhealed wound for the entire Fulton County Courthouse community.

Judge James Bodiford – appointed only last month to replace the previous presiding judge – has moved swiftly to push the Nichols case forward. He was expected to announce Monday when he will resume the trial.

Experts have been hired to evaluate Nichols as part of his planned mental health defense and some of them will likely be called to testify at trial. The county has agreed to pay $125,000 for a mental health assessment for Nichols – but it is unclear if those funds will cover money past due to Nichols’ experts and money that will be due to them in the future.

“Judges can order lawyers to go forward, but you cannot order an expert to perform an examination and testify,” said Stephen Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights. “These are private citizens. They generally in my experience do not work for free.”

Under an agreement between Nichols’ lawyers and the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council, approved by Bodiford on Thursday, the court found that the constitutional requirements for Nichols’ defense can be met with the revised trial budget, “subject to the availability of sufficient appropriations from the Georgia Legislature.”

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From The Albany Herald:

The House overwhelmingly approved legislation Tuesday aimed at preserving Georgia’s fledgling indigent defense system by reining in costs.
“This is a program that is worth saving,” Rep. David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, the bill’s chief sponsor, told his legislative colleagues. “But if we are to save it, it must be changed.”

Lawmakers approved the statewide network of public defenders in 2003 to replace a hodgepodge of local systems that had generated lawsuits charging some judicial circuits with failing to provide an adequate defense for indigent suspects. A year later, the Legislature funded the program and the system was launched at the beginning of 2005. Costs quickly mounted to the point that by this year, the system’s budget had grown to $107 million, double what the state and counties combined were spending on indigent defense just eight years ago.

To make matters worse, the system drew a ream of negative publicity over the Brian Nichols case. Although the alleged Fulton County courthouse gunman has yet to go to trial three years after the multiple murders, the tab for defending him has hit nearly $2 million. The legislation, which passed 141-21 and now heads to the Senate, is designed to reduce state taxpayers’ burden for defending poor people accused of crime by shifting more of the costs to counties and to the defendants themselves.

Under the legislation, the state would cover the entire bill for only the first $150,000 of the cost of a death penalty case. Beyond that, counties would have to pick up part of the tab.

Also, the measure changes the income-eligibility limit to qualify for a public defender from 125 percent of the federal poverty level down to 100 percent of the poverty limit.

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From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Fulton County Courthouse rampage suspect Brian Nichols may lose one of his state-funded attorneys if Georgia officials get their way at a hearing Thursday.

Mack Crawford, head of the Public Defender Standards Council, was in court Tuesday trying to persuade the new trial judge to dismiss attorney Jacob Sussman of North Carolina to save money. The council, which pays for the representation of poor and capital defendants, would use existing staff to help the defense team, led by North Carolina legal heavyweight Henderson Hill.

Superior Court Judge Jim Bodiford said he will issue a ruling during a hearing Thursday. At that time, the judge also vowed to set a trial date —- and to stick to it. The case involving the March 11, 2005, shooting deaths of a judge, court reporter, sheriff’s sergeant and federal customs agent has been delayed for three years due to defense complaints that they need more money in addition to the $1.5 million they have received. Nichols has pleaded not guilty.

Crawford insists the council has faced its own budget cuts and is tapped out. And, he has pointed out, Nichols has four lawyers, more than most death penalty defendants, who are allotted two attorneys.

Three of Nichols’ attorneys were making more than the state average of $95 an hour until one of them voluntarily reduced his fee. A fourth attorney is volunteering her time and only requires reimbursement for expenses. Crawford also has argued that the $1.5 million the defense team has spent is more than four times the average cost of a death penalty defense in Georgia. Hill disputes this amount, but doesn’t want to release documents detailing what his team has spent and on what.

“If Mr. Nichols had funds and was independently wealthy and could provide counsel, none of these issues would be litigated in open court,” Hill told the judge. “The world has no need to know about this prior to trial.”

The judge has released documents showing that Nichols’ attorneys spent about $47,000 on hotel expenses from June through December 2007. That doesn’t include meals, gas expenses and attorney fees. The judge was responding to a request by a legislative committee. The committee initially requested the information on defense expenditures due to concerns about the five trial delays.

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Former public defender Sherri Jefferson’s conviction and sentence of 30 days’ imprisonment was reversed by Georgia’s Supreme Court in a decision published yesterday.

Supreme Court Presiding Justice Carol Hunstein, writing for the court’s majority, said the old standard that Georgia judges had been given by the court to consider contempt had resulted in too many inconsistent decisions.

“Thus, because vigorous advocacy is essential not only to the preservation of individual rights but also to the integrity of the judicial system whose truthseeking process is sought to be protected through the exercise of the contempt power, courts must be judicious in their approach to adjudicating contempt,” Hunstein wrote. “In considering whether to hold an attorney in contempt, the court should always assess whether there are other correctives sufficient to address the problematic conduct in question.”

Still, contempt cases are rare, according to Stephen Jolly, Brunswick district attorney. No one prosecuted Jefferson, though Jolly participated in the appeals, arguing against her. But he said the old standard was fuzzy from his point of view. “We were a little frustrated ourselves in the vagueness of the contempt standard,” he said, adding that most lawyers are well-behaved but do appreciate knowing what the boundaries are as they are standing up for their case.

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