Sounds great! Now if we all could just get our clients hooked up w/cell phones with My Mobile Witness on speed dial, all our problems with validating alibis and “not me, him!” defenses would be solved!

Seriously. Who thinks of these things?

Oh, sorry. What I meant to say is that since the last update here at PD Stuff, public defenders in seven states have begun refusing cases because of high case loads and lack of funds/resources. Scoplaw is right in the thick of it, working in the office that is currently litigating the issue in the FL Supreme Court. Simple Justice points out that the incredibly bad working conditions of public defenders are nothing new:

For as long as I can remember, PDs have been at the edge of a precipice, doing the heavy lifting of representing the poor so that the wheels of the criminal justice system can grind away. They stood there trying to hold back the crush of humanity that threatened to swallow them, and the system. The crush can no longer be held back, unless these offices give up any pretense of providing meaningful representation. No one can represents hundreds of defendants at a time. No lawyer can fulfill their ethical obligation when their caseload that increases at this pace. They are literally drowning under a sea of humanity.

With hatchet jobs in the press about public defenders it’s no wonder so few people seem to understand the realities of the situation. And as if that weren’t bad enough, Skelly points to the Legal Ethics Forum where Andrew Perlman thinks that the situation is only going to get worse. At least in Wisconsin, some PDs are getting recognized as the unsung heroes they are (via Song of the Soul). Gideon had a great suggestion to address the dire situation nationwide: a bailout for public defender systems.

Down in the trenches, Ipse Dixit is dealing with clients who aren’t helping themselves, Injustice Anywhere has been working hard for thankless clients, and Doubtslinger just lost a murder trial. That’s a tough one, but Doubtslinger has the attitude we all must have in these times, the attitude that we must have to keep us going against all odds: “Tomorrow will be a better day.”

It better be, dammit. Hey, at least we got a new president.

“Prosecuting criminals is an important part of keeping order in the city,” said Ken Foster, anti-crime advocate and co-founder of Silence Is Violence.

But Foster acknowledges that doesn’t tell the whole story.

“The other side of the coin is the Public Defenders Office.”

On the corner of Tulane and Broad, 32 criminal court public defenders work to help the city’s indigent and accused, that’s compared to the 90 district attorneys paid to argue against them.

“There’s a recognition in this city that we want a top flight fully functioning, effective, efficient, and fair criminal justice system, but we’re not going to get that if we only have a public defenders office that’s one third the size of the prosecutor,” said Chris Flood, New Orleans interim chief public defender.

Flood says the disparity between his office’s resources and those provided to the district attorney is bound to get wider, which he warns would dramatically impact the criminal justice system.

“We’re not going to be in a position where we can take anymore cases, and if we can’t take anymore cases, no cases will move forward,” said Flood.

According to Flood, the State of Louisiana doles out about $2,360,000 in funding to the Office of the Orleans Public Defenders, court fees provide approximately $1,170,000 and a federal grant offers $1,720,000. Flood says the federal dollars, however, run out next year and are not renewable.

With the major financial hole looming, Flood fears he could soon have to lay off a third of his lawyers. On Thursday, he pled his case to the New Orleans City Council, which Flood says, historically, has never given the Office of Orleans Public Defenders a dime.

Flood urged the council to make good on his office’s appeal for a 5 million dollar chunk of the 2009 city budget, and his plea found traction.

Read the entire article

A divided Nevada Supreme Court has adopted standards to ensure that indigents charged with crimes get adequate legal counsel, and has set an April 1 deadline for implementing those standards.

The high court’s order, released Friday, also gives Washoe and Clark Counties, Nevada’s largest, until next May to complete studies on caseloads that public defenders should carry.

The mandate was scheduled to take effect last April but was delayed pending a review of the impact on rural areas of the state. Justices plan a Jan. 6 hearing to consider that review.

The order for adequate counsel is in line with a long-standing U.S. Supreme Court requirement. Delays were sought because of the high cost of implementing the order — but justices also had been told that not complying with the requirement opens the state and its counties to possible lawsuits.

Justices Nancy Saitta and Michael Cherry agreed with the majority decision to adopt the performance standards, but said they should take effect Jan. 1. They also dissented because there wasn’t a requirement that defense lawyers advise clients of all the consequences of a guilty plea.

Saitta wrote that the consequences go beyond potential penalties in criminal cases and include other factors such as “forfeiture of assets, deportation and civil liabilities which may be affected by the acceptance of a plea offer.”

Read the entire story

Beginning this week, public defender offices across Missouri will be able to refuse new clients as they try to deal with huge backlogs of cases.

The Missouri Public Defender Commission approved a policy in July that allows local offices to opt out of new cases if they exceed maximum caseload capacity for three consecutive months.

Offices in Springfield, Ava, Jefferson City and Columbia will be the first to begin enforcing the policy Wednesday.

The first types of clients to go unrepresented will likely be people accused of probation violations or those charged with certain collections and traffic crimes. Private attorneys who can take cases for free may take up some of the slack, but it’s not known what effect the shift will do to an already overburdened court system.

“This isn’t going to come close to fixing the problem,” said Cathy Kelly, deputy director of the state public defender system. “We’re trying to move toward fixing capacity without pulling the rug out all at once.”

Greene County Presiding Judge Dan Conklin said he was pleased that the offices planned to phase in the cutoff, which he said was “reasonable,” but acknowledged, “We’re in trouble.”

The state’s 36-year-old system for representing Missouri’s poorest criminal defendants who can’t afford their own counsel has not seen a meaningful increase in staffing or budget since 2000.

Read the entire story

The trial of the State v. Reed, second degree murder, starts tomorrow
morning in Mohave County Superior Court. I am second chair to my boss, Dana,
and it will be my first experience trying a felony case to a jury. It
has been my first foray into serious pretrial motion practice. I won’t
comment on the case, at least not until a verdict has been rendered,
but here are some newspaper articles that have been published recently.

Judge allows evidence of prescription medication

Judge won’t dismiss murder case

DNA dispute pushes back trial

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.

Read the entire story

An assistant Monroe County public defender has been honored by the New York State Bar Association as a lawyer who provides extraordinary legal services to low-income and disadvantaged clients.

Andre Vitale, 39, received the Denison Ray Award from the state Bar Association for his work in the Public Defender’s Office.

“Andre is a committed young attorney,” said County Public Defender Tim Donaher.

“He really exemplifies the qualities of what makes an excellent public defender.”

Vitale received another statewide award earlier this year from the New York State Defender’s Association.

Vitale has been with the Public Defender’s Office for almost a decade.

He now handles violent felony and major drug cases.

Before joining the office, Vitale worked in the anti-trust office in the federal Department of Agriculture. However, he said, he knew he wanted a change.

“I always wanted to represent a person,” Vitale said. “I didn’t want a big organization like that. I wanted an actual person standing next to me.”

Now, he said, the reward is in working with men and women who otherwise would not be able to afford legal representation.

Read the entire story

The Hall County public defender’s office is asking county supervisors to consider a video connection from that office to the jail.

The request from Public Defender Gerard Piccolo comes as defense attorneys have to drive more to see clients because the county’s new jail is on a busy highway outside of the downtown government center.

Supervisors were scheduled to talk about a possible video link during a meeting Tuesday.

Supervisor Bob Rye says it’s a way to be more efficient. He believes it would cost less than $10,000 to add the video connection to the public defender’s office.

The county already uses a video connection from the jail to the Hall County Courthouse for arraignments.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear, and will most certainly overrule, and odd decision of the Vermont Supreme Court dismissing a conviction on speedy trial grounds because of delays attributed solely to the defendant’s public defenders.  The Court reasoned that the public defenders were State actors and the defendant should therefore receive the benefit of a speedy trial bar to prosecution by the State.  Read the decision from the State Supreme court by clicking  Vermont v. Brillon .

Here are the issues as described by the U. S. Supreme Court:

1. Whether continuances and delays caused solely by an indigent defendant’s public defender can arise to a speedy trial right violation, and be charged against the State pursuant to the test in Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514 (1972), on the theory that public defenders are paid by the state (with a small “s”).

2. Whether the right to counsel, as established in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), should result in broader speedy trial rights to indigent defendants than defendants who are able to retain private counsel, such that only delays by private counsel get charged against the defendant under the Barker v. Wingo test.