Category — Money Issues

From Nevada Appeal:

There was more consensus than controversy among public defenders, prosecutors and county managers who met with the Nevada Supreme Court on proposed changes to programs to represent indigent criminal defendants.

Federal Public Defender Franny Forsman said the Tuesday hearings before the state high court brought all sides a step closer to what she termed a “cultural sea change.”

At Tuesday’s public hearing, Forsman and Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Nancy Becker suggested revised language agreeable to both defenders and prosecutors for performance standards for indigent-defense lawyers.

The Supreme Court in March delayed implementing reforms aimed at ensuring indigent defendants get adequate legal representation, pending a review of the wording of performance standards. Rural court officials also questioned the feasibility of completely removing judges from the selection of court-appointed defenders.

Forsman and Becker on Tuesday identified five relatively minor issues still in dispute, including whether defendants should always be advised of their right to appeal a conviction.

In September, the Supreme Court will hold another public hearing about issues facing rural counties, including funding.

Judge Dan Papez, of the Seventh Judicial District Court covering White Pine and Lincoln counties, called it increasingly difficult for rural counties to fund indigent defense.

“It’s a state responsibility,” Papez said, “not a local responsibility.”

Justice William Maupin has called the reforms the result of the most important examination of the Nevada state criminal justice system in recent years.

They were ordered after reports by the Las Vegas Review-Journal in March 2007 about flaws in Clark County’s indigent defense system and reports that Clark County public defenders handled an average of more than 350 felony and gross misdemeanor cases a year. The National Legal Aid and Defender Association recommends defenders handle 150 such cases annually.

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From the Detroit Free Press:

Scandalously low pay for court-appointed attorneys and a lack of state standards and oversight have made Michigan a McJustice state — with expedience stressed over upholding a fundamental constitutional right.

The criminal justice system works when truth emerges from the adversarial efforts of a competent prosecutor and vigorous defense. It fails miserably when an outgunned and underpaid public defender is effectively encouraged to cut corners.

A just released report requested by the Legislature in 2006, examining public defense in 10 sample counties, should force an overdue fix.

“A Race to the Bottom,” the title of the study conducted by the National Legal Aid & Defender Association and released last week by the State Bar of Michigan, found that defense attorneys routinely lack the time, training, investigators, experts and resources to prepare cases adequately. Others are appointed to cases for which they are not qualified. Many criminal defendants never speak to an attorney.

Fixing the problem will cost money, but very little compared to the $2 billion a year that Michigan spends on prisons. Getting it right at trial time is especially important today, when appeals courts and the Michigan Supreme Court practically rubber-stamp criminal convictions.

The system cannot be fixed by the hodgepodge of poorly funded county programs for indigent defense. Michigan must establish state standards and oversight of its public defense system — and ensure uniform and adequate funding to counties.

From a purely fiscal standpoint, this is a mess almost begging for a class-action lawsuit that could cost the state plenty. But more basically, budget problems cannot be an excuse for curtailing constitutional rights. Louisiana is in no better shape than Michigan, yet legislators in that Katrina-ravaged state last year passed comprehensive reforms on indigent defense that include quadrupled funding.

“When people understand that one of our cherished constitutional rights is in danger, they find a way to come together and fix it,” said David Carroll of the National Legal Aid & Defender Association.

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From The Northwest Indiana and Illinois Times:

Even some of the poorest criminal defendants must do their part to reduce the cost of Lake County government to local taxpayers.

Lake County Public Defender David Schneider said Monday his staff has recovered $30,000 this year from hundreds they defended in criminal court at public expense. “Our goal this year is $70,000.”

That is only a fraction of the $2.3 million the Public Defender’s office will spend this year to employ a staff of 52 attorneys, paralegals, investigators and secretaries who organize the defense of criminal defendants who cannot afford private trial lawyers.

But Schneider said, “Although we have done this for years, we know belts are going have to be tightened. That is why we leaning a little harder on the attorneys to prepare fee affidavits for any of our clients who are out on cash bonds,” Schneider said.

State law requires criminal court judges to appoint public defenders for indigent persons, even if they can afford to deposit enough money at the clerk’s office for a bond to ensure they will return for each of their court hearings after they are released from the county jail prior to trial.

State law permits the public defender to ask a judge to subtract their expenses from a defendant’s cash bond before it is returned to the defendant after the case is resolved.

The Lake County Council is preparing in the coming weeks to begin setting lower spending targets for all county government agencies, including the courts and public safety agencies, which make up the lion’s share of the government budget.

“Outside of the cost of death penalty (cases), we have lived within our means,” Schneider said. Death penalty cases, because of the intense and time-consuming trial preparation cost hundreds of thousands of extra dollars.

Schneider said local taxpayers are only tapped for 60 percent of his office’s budget. The rest comes from the state treasury. However, the state mandates the public defender maintain minimum staffing levels, which will complicate any efforts to cut his budget by layoffs.

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From the Park Rapids Enterprise:

Justice delayed is justice denied.

That prognostication has become both a cliché and a rallying call for legal reformers. But it’s about to become a burden on indigent Minnesotans and cash-strapped counties.

On June 5 massive cuts were enacted to the state public defenders budget to address deficits and budget shortfalls. The equivalent of 72 of 441 positions was cut from public defenders’ offices and appellate lawyers statewide, a 15 percent reduction in staff.

Minnesota public defenders, according to state compiled statistics, represent 85 percent of all persons charged with felonies and half of the persons accused of misdemeanors.

“I would think that we’re higher up here in PD representation than those numbers simply because the metro areas have a larger pool of private attorneys from the criminal defense bar,” said Kris Kolar, Chief Public Defender for the 9th Judicial District. She added that Hubbard County may be more economically distressed, so that would be a factor, too.

The State Board of Public Defense also voted to stop representing indigent parents in custody fights and in terminations of parental rights (TPR) cases. The former are typically referred to as CHIPS cases, for Children in Need of Help or Protection.

The Board said it faced a $3.8 million deficit after legislators cut $1.5 million from its budget this past session.

It means that overworked public defenders will shoulder even heavier caseloads, poor defendants will wait longer to go to trial and to appeal their cases, court administrators will wait longer to collect fines and fees and the judicial system will feel the strain.

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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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Our friend Grits for Breakfast has been steadfastly covering issues with the Dallas Public Defender’s Office. Below are some of his most recent posts on the subject:

• Cost per case at Dallas PD much lower
• Move to slash public defender budget couldn’t come at worse time
• Dallas public defender budget saves county money compared to neighbors
  

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 Dallas Morning News:

Dallas County officials are working on an analysis of the public defender’s office in an attempt to find out why it isn’t as cost-efficient as it should be.

A search for a permanent replacement for former chief public defender Brad Lollar will not begin until the analysis is completed, officials said. The study is expected to take about 30 days and will be submitted to the commissioners, who are trying to close a $34 million budget gap.

Mr. Lollar was asked by county commissioners to resign Tuesday after commissioners raised questions about his management of the office. Studies have shown that using public defenders to represent poor defendants is cheaper than appointing private defense lawyers.

In Dallas County, using public defenders has saved the county money. But Ron Stretcher, the county’s criminal justice director, said the cost difference between public defenders and private lawyers is narrowing.

He said he is working with the budget office and the public defender’s interim chief, Lynn Richardson, to find out why. More criminal court judges have added public defenders to their courtrooms in recent months, but some aren’t using them enough to make them cost-efficient, officials have said.

The county’s analysis will focus on public defender caseloads. Mr. Stretcher said he will be speaking with judges to find out which cases they are assigning to public defenders and why. Dallas County was the first in Texas to form a public defender’s office, which has served as a model for the rest of the state.

The budget cuts across the country have become such big news, that ABC is carrying a story on it:

Statewide public defenders in Kentucky and Minnesota and local offices in cities such as Atlanta and Miami say budget cuts are forcing them to fire or furlough trial lawyers, leaving the offices unable to handle misdemeanor and, in some instances, serious felony cases.

The cuts leave states scrambling to find a solution to a constitutional dilemma: The Sixth Amendment requires the government to either provide poor defendants with lawyers or release them.

“It is an impending legal crisis in our state,” Joseph Lambert, the chief justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court, told ABC News.

The conflicts have prompted at least one lawsuit, brought on Wednesday by several criminal suspects in Atlanta who may temporarily be without lawyers, and could result in some public defenders being held in contempt of court.

“Without adequate defense counsel, the public simply cannot be confident that persons are not being wrongfully convicted of crimes,” Lambert said.

Participants expect the states to reach a temporary solution and do not expect criminal defendants to be freed because they do not have lawyers.

The cuts to defenders’ offices come as the economic downturn has trickled down to the state level across the country, forcing local governments to look for every chance to trim their budgets, including cutting the criminal justice system.

Public defenders in Minnesota, Kentucky, Florida and Georgia say they will not be able to handle all their cases beginning next month. Miami-Dade County Public Defender Bennett Brummer said his office would reject all but the most serious felony cases and several other public defender offices in the state have also said they will begin rejecting cases.

Brummer said a state agency will provide lawyers, after which judges will appoint private lawyers to take the cases.

But the refusals have raised the prospect that judges could hold local defenders in contempt for refusing to take cases. A 2006 opinion from the American Bar Association says lawyers representing indigent defendants should withdraw if their caseloads prevent them from providing “competent and diligent” representation.

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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.

…

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.

…

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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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 KSTP.com:

Those accused of crimes in Minnesota will likely face longer waits for their day in court and parents trying to hang onto their children will stop getting free legal representation after the state Board of Public Defense voted Thursday to cut more than 15 percent of its lawyers.

That translates into the equivalent of 72 full-time positions, of which 53 are currently filled positions. The board said in a release that it faces a $3.8 million deficit after the Legislature cut $1.5 million from its budget to address a state shortfall.

Public defenders represent the majority of defendants in Minnesota, including 85 percent of those accused of felonies and half of those accused of misdemeanors. The average public defender handles 714 cases a year, a number expected to top 800 after the job cuts take effect next month.

“Our clients are going to notice it the most,” said Bill Ward, chief public defender in the 10th judicial district on the northern edge of the Twin Cities. “There is going to be delay.”

Ward said the staff cuts will ripple through the court system, forcing more delays in trials and making local jurisdictions wait longer to collect fines, fees and assessments.

Of the 72 cuts, 19 are vacant jobs that won’t be filled, about 30 will be eliminated through early retirements and other voluntary departures and the equivalent of 23 or 24 full-time attorneys will face layoffs, Ward said.

The board will stop representing parents in child protection and parental rights termination cases because public defenders are not required to provide those services.

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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 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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