Category — Money Issues

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.

Read the entire story

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.

Read the entire story

From public defender blogger Accident Prone:

The front page of the Star Tribune had a picture of Governor Tim Pawlenty. Button-down shirt, hands mid-clap, eyes crinkled from the huge smile on his face. The article touted the SUCCESS! of the 2008 Minnesota budget. $20 million to buy land from a power company for a new state park in Lake Vermillion! $300,000 for an exhibit for polar bears! Funding for light rail! Millions for a new parking garage for the Mall of America!

But $4.6 million dollars short for public defense. Public defenders around the state have been told “Pack up your bags, your last day is July 1″. A system already short on public defenders now being told you need to cut 60 attorneys.

I’m angry. And frustrated. Our “union”, the Teamsters, doesn’t really seem too interested in fighting for us. Our Chief Public Defender here in the 4th District looks tired from attempting to save everyone that works for him. Even though our specific office here in Hennepin County is currently 13 attorneys short of a full deck, they are still threatening to cut 12 more. The 10 ‘o clock news full of stories of what it would mean to the courthouses and clients.

But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is we don’t know why. Did the legislature and governor not appropriate adequate funding for an entire branch of government? Did they actually choose the Mall of America over the poor? Or is it something more sinister and sad? Rumors are flying around that it wasn’t that the legislature failed to appropriate the funding, but rather that the Board of Public Defense crunched the numbers incorrectly and didn’t ask for the appropriate amount of funding. I’ve heard other rumors that the Board is saying it was our 3.5% COLAS (our first COLA since public defense in Minnesota went statewide) that is causing the problems. Either way, we have no answers.

Prosecutors aren’t facing any sort of staffing cuts. They will still be charging cases. Judges will still be sitting on the bench to hear those cases. Cops will still be arresting my clients on the streets and filling the jail. But with 12 less public defenders in my district, those clients cannot be assured adequate representation. The whole criminal system will suffer. By law, indigent people in Minnesota must be represented by someone employed by the Minnesota Board of Public Defense. There is no such thing as private-bar appointments. As I sit here with at least 25 open felonies (and a slew of misdemeanors) on my desk that include Criminal Sexual Conduct and Attempted Murder, I wonder how I could take on more and still spot every legal issue, do all the investigation, and prep every trial with the level of comprehensiveness I find necessary.

Minnesota used to have one of the best public defender systems in the country. Now, as I see it unravel, I am scared for what it means for the poor in this state. And trust me, everyone is worse off for it.

Read the entire post

From the Reno Gazette-Journal:

A recent Supreme Court panel’s declaration that the criminal defense offered to Nevada’s poor is in crisis, along with its order for new standards to improve the system, has sent prosecutors, public defenders, county officials and others scrambling to assess the level of justice the indigent receive and offer solutions to protect tight budgets and constitutional rights.

Facing a July 15 deadline for new performance standards that could cost Washoe County millions to implement, the players have conflicting views on what should happen next.

Prosecutors want the standards to be used as guidelines, not mandates, while the American Civil Liberties Union wants them strictly enforced. Public defenders want more financial support, while county officials want the process stalled so they can ask the Legislature to help with funding.

Meanwhile, the chair of the Indigent Defense Commission, Nevada Supreme Court Justice Michael Cherry, wants the process to go forward — citing a news story last week about an inmate in Texas who was released after 27 years in prison when DNA evidence proved his innocence.

“We don’t want to let that happen in our state,” Cherry said. “We’re working hard and diligently to make this happen.”

Lee Rowland, with the ACLU of Nevada, said the commission’s orders should go into effect immediately or the state could face lawsuits for incompetent representation. The fact that the panel already has stated that the standards are necessary, “the liability for the state of Nevada is at an all-time high,” she said.

Read the entire story

From the Lexington Herald-Leader (KY):

The state’s chief public defender is asking judges to order the state Finance and Administration Cabinet to pay for private lawyers for poor criminal defendants because his agency can no longer afford to represent them.

In a letter to judges released Wednesday, public advocate Ernie Lewis warned that public defenders will begin refusing certain types of cases starting July 1 as a result of the $2.3 million budget cut approved this spring by the General Assembly.

Lewis said the Department of Public Advocacy cannot afford to fill about 40 vacancies. With caseloads already at unethically high levels, Lewis said, public defenders cannot take on additional cases.

“The dilemma that now exists is that the Commonwealth of Kentucky is obligated to provide counsel to poor people charged with crimes, but the legislature has failed to fund that obligation,” Lewis wrote. “DPA will assert that the solution to this is for courts to enter orders requiring the Commonwealth to pay for private counsel.”

Read the entire story

From The Herald (SC):

South Carolina’s patchwork system that provides attorneys to defendants who can’t afford them is undergoing a multimillion-dollar transformation — one that advocates say is long overdue.

More than eight in 10 of nearly 126,000 cases heard in the state’s general sessions courts last year involved defendants unable to afford a lawyer, according to the S.C. Administrative Office of the Courts.

In some rural counties, the percentage of defendants represented by public defenders is as high as 95 percent, said Patton Adams, executive director of the S.C. Commission on Indigent Defense.

Indigent defense is important because each person charged with a crime has the constitutional right to adequate representation.

The revision of the 30-year-old indigent defense law did away with the nonprofits, creating public defender positions in each judicial circuit. The new jobs are on par in pay and benefits with prosecutors, and the new defense lawyers — like prosecutors — are state employees.

The new system is designed to provide accountability both for money and the quality of representation that defendants get, to help get crowded trial schedules moving and to improve recruitment and retention of public defenders. It is being rolled out over a two-year period.

Read the entire story

From The State (SC):

State officials hope to have a new public defender system in place in all of South Carolina by July 1.

A law last year did away with the 39 nonprofit organizations that provided legal representation to the poor in South Carolina courts.

The state Administrative Office of the Courts says more than 80 percent of the 126,000 cases heard last year involved defendants unable to afford an attorney.

Nine people already have been appointed to fill the new public defender positions and seven more are expected to be named by July 1. All 16 judicial circuits will then have a state employee running public defender operations.

The new jobs are similar in pay and benefits with prosecutors.

Private attorneys representing poor defendants will be paid $50 an hour, $10 more than they received under the old system.

Read the entire story

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.

Read the entire story

From WAVE (TV):

The very real impact of a bare bones budget is beginning to be felt all around Kentucky. The latest group to face possible layoffs is the state’s public defenders. If you think this is a concern only to criminals, WAVE 3’s Janelle MacDonald says think again.

The Department of Public Advocacy announced this week that because of a $2.5 million budget cut in the next fiscal year, it is cutting 54 jobs — many of them attorneys. Those are the public defenders who are already handling some of Kentuckiana’s most high-profile cases. Lawyers who are an essential part of the justice system.

Gail Coontz, Cecil New and Said Biyad. Imagine being responsible for their entire legal defense. Now add to that hundreds of other cases each year and you begin to get the picture of the job of a public defender. Rebecca Murrell is a public defender in Bullitt, Nelson and Spencer Counties.

“It’s going to be right around 450 cases. Almost all my entire caseload is a felony caseload,” says Murrell

That is far above the American Bar Association’s national standard of 310 cases per lawyer. With expected cuts, Murrell’s caseload — and that of other public defenders — is only expected to get worse.

“You can’t render effective assistance of counsel as required by the constitution and that would lead little alternative but to turn away cases,” Murrell says.

Read the entire story

From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

The Allegheny County Public Defender’s Office is scrambling to reassign hundreds of cases after five attorneys quit in the past six weeks.

Chief Public Defender Michael Machen said the five departing trial lawyers are leaving more than 600 cases to be reassigned. Replacements have been hired but it will take time to train them, Machen said.

“We’ve been able to reassign a lot of cases internally,” Machen said. “I’m not going to send an unprepared attorney to court. I won’t do it.”

Most of the cases that are not reassigned internally will be given to private attorneys, leaving taxpayers to cover thousands of dollars in attorneys fees.

Total costs won’t be known until the private attorneys submit bills, but one factor that can influence the cost is whether a defendant enters a plea or opts for a trial. A lawyer can bill up to $750 for a guilty plea and more for trials, said Helen Lynch, administrator of the county Common Pleas criminal division.

The county is responsible for providing legal representation to indigent defendants.

“We don’t want what’s happening at the Public Defender’s Office to affect the administration of justice,” Lynch said. “If we didn’t (appoint private attorneys), the public defender would postpone the cases. That’s not fair to the people in jail, and the county would have to pay to house them there.”

Common Pleas Judge Donna Jo McDaniel, who leads the criminal division, agreed to allow some cases — 98 so far — to be reassigned through the county’s Office of Conflict Counsel, which includes four county attorneys who handle indigent cases when the public defender has a conflict.

That office will absorb roughly 30 of the cases and assign the rest to private attorneys, said Richard Narvin, head of conflict counsel.

Read the entire story

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.”

Read the entire story

From the Kitsap Sun (WA):

A pot of state cash, mandated to improve Kitsap County’s criminal defense services for people who cannot afford them, will likely swell to almost a half-million dollars next year.

County officials, unsure of how to spend the money, hired a consultant in 2007 to study Kitsap’s public defense system. The results of the study could lead to the creation of a new county position and a “comprehensive” plan for the program.

Kitsap County Clerk Dave Peterson, who manages contracts with the cadre of private law-firms providing indigent defense, applied for a state grant that delivered about $103,000 in 2006 and $208,000 in 2007. It will likely mean another $208,000 this year from the state’s Office of Public Defense. No money has yet been promised past 2009.

He sought outside help figuring out how to use it. “We wanted to take a look at the public defense system we were using,” Peterson said, adding that once they examined it, they would “better know how to spend the money.”

The Legislature put forth the money beginning in 2005. Their rationale: a lawsuit that alleged a public defender in Grant County had been handling a staggering, yet lucrative, felony caseload that he managed by infrequently going to trial. The defender also had an inordinately high percentage of guilty pleas.

In Kitsap, a felony case other than murder is contracted to private firms for $1,069 plus hourly and flat rates for future proceedings. Bar associations typically recommend a limit of 150 cases per attorney.

Read the entire story

From wymtnews.com (KY):

Local attorneys say state budget cuts could jeopardize their ability to continue defending people in court.

Brian Hamilton says his life had spun out of control thanks to an addiction to drugs. “I was arrested, drug court came along and gave me the opportunity to change my life,” Hamilton said.

Drug offenders can move from the courtroom back into a productive life thanks to drug court but public defenders say state budget cuts could threaten it.

Brian Hamilton is now a supervisor at a Barbourville business. Many drug court graduates get help finding a job through a social worker program that one local attorney says could be on the chopping block.

“We’re facing some pretty serious cuts,” said Roger Gibbs with the Department of Public Advocacy. State public advocacy officials say if the proposed state budget goes through, thirty attorneys could lose their jobs. They say that would cause a major backlog in court.”

So we would have case loads in excess of national standards and bordering on unethical,” Gibbs said. And that, he says, could have a major effect on defendants. “If we have fewer lawyers, that means fewer jail visits, fewer opportunities to interact with out clients. It means less time to work on some real solutions,” Gibbs said.

Read the entire story

From The (Macon, GA) Telegraph:

The funding roller coaster continued for Georgia’s public defenders on Tuesday as a key Senate committee slashed their budget to just a fraction of what they had sought to stay afloat.

The midyear budget that passed the Senate Appropriations Committee contained just $513,000 for public defenders to get them through the June 30 end of the fiscal year. Gov. Sonny Perdue had recommended $3.6 million.

“We still believe they have sufficient resources to meet their needs,” Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson, R-Savannah, told reporters.

The move continues a tug-of-war over dollars between the legislative and judicial branches that’s been exacerbated by the high-profile case of Brian Nichols, which has ground to standstill because of a dispute over funding for his defense.

While none of the additional state cash would go to the trial of accused Atlanta courthouse gunman, the case has become a lightening rod and emboldened some who believe the state’s indigent defense lawyers - funded by court fees - are driving up costs unnecessarily.

Sen. Preston Smith, who oversees judicial branch spending, has suggested that death penalty opponents are trying to put an end to capital punishment in Georgia by placing the price tag out of reach.

But officials with the Public Defender Standards Council have said they are wrestling with a jump in capital cases. They warned that without additional state funds they could be forced to furlough their lawyers and support staff for the month of June, bringing the court system to standstill.

House Majority Leader Jerry Keen said Tuesday that far from putting the brakes on capital cases, the additional state funding was needed to allow them to move forward. He called the Senate action “a huge blow to the ability of prosecutors to begin prosecuting these capital cases.”

“This money was to get those trials moving,” the Republican from St. Simons Island said.

There was no immediate comment from the Public Defender Standards Council.

Read the entire story