Bipartisan Constitution Project finds “grave problems” nationwide in the public defense system and warns about deteriorating representation for poor defendants as states face tightening budgets.
In a sweeping and troubling new report, a committee of the bipartisan Constitution Project has documented widespread and deepening problems in the nation’s public defender system.
Entitled, “Justice Denied, America’s Continuing Neglect of our Constitutional Right to Counsel,” the report’s authors even go so far as to encourage litigation by public interest law firms and other third parties to enforce rights to counsel first recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court forty six years ago in its landmark Gideon v. Wainwright decision. In Gideon, the court established that every American charged with a criminal offense has a Constitutional right, under the Sixth Amendment, to be represented by an attorney.
The report was produced by the Project’s National Right to Counsel Committee
whose honorary co-chairs are former Vice President Walter Mondale and former FBI Director William S. Sessions. It’s members not only include lawyers, law professors and retired judges but also an district attorney and others with prosecutorial experience. It also includes Alan J. Crotzer who served nearly 25 years in prison for a wrongful conviction before being exonerated by DNA evidence.
“For the first time since the Gideon decision,” the committee reported, “an independent, diverse group, whose members include the relevant constituencies of the justice system, has examined the nation’s ways of providing legal services for the poor and is sounding the alarm about the grave problems that exist today nationwide.”
“In most of the country,” the committee found, “notwithstanding the dedication of lawyers and other committed staff, quality defense work is simply impossible because of inadequate funding, excessive caseloads, a lack of genuine independence, and insufficient availability of other essential resources.”
In particular, the committee reported, there is a “dire need” for reforms in the way indigent defense is organized and funded and because county officials have power over local funding for indigent defense there are numerous reported instances where political pressure undermines the independence of public defenders. Currently, the committee found, there are lawsuits pending in at least 30 of the 50 states (including Washington and Oregon) challenging the adequacy of public defense programs.
The report offers 22 recommendations, including a recommendation that each state “should establish a statewide, independent, non-partisan agency headed by a Board or Commission responsible for all components of indigent defense services.” It also recommended the creation, by the U.S. Government, of a “National Center for Defense Services” to assist state efforts to provide quality legal representation to poor people.
To help deal with crippling workloads on public defenders, the committee recommends that “certain non-serious misdemeanors should be reclassified, thereby reducing financial and other pressures on a state’s indigent defense system.”
The committee also made the unusual recommendation of urging litigation, when necessary, to deal with problems requiring systemic remedies, and said that “whenever possible” such lawsuits should be brought by “disinterested third parties,” including public interest legal organizations.
“It [the report] does not paint a pretty picture,” said Tim Lewis, one of the reports authors, in an interview with National Public Radio about the report findings. “You should not have a better shot at justice, a better opportunity for an adequate defense, depending upon who arrests you in this country or where you were when you were arrested or what court system a defendant winds up in. This is a basic Constitutional right.”
Clearly one of the alarm bells the Constitution Project and the committee are ringing with the report concerns the chronic lack of resources for public defenders. Those problems were already pervasive, the committee noted, before the current economic downturn.
“Just as this report was being completed,” the committee noted, “the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a non-partisan research and policy organization, reported that ‘[a]t least 43 states faced or are facing shortfalls in their budgets this and/or next year.’”
–CFJ
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