“If You Can’t Afford a Lawyer”
April 9, 2017
I have long known there are
differences between public defenders’ offices which represent clients more
thoroughly than many private attorneys at lower-end prices (e.g. Colorado
public defenders trained hired and managed at the state level, as I have observed
from the time my son-in-law became one, through his present position as a
district who has worked to reduce jail populations and levels of sentencing to
prison), and those who focus on plea-bargaining (as I observed to be common
practice every morning I appeared in and around courts in Boston as a student
public defender).
Just now on NPR I listened to
this week’s hour-long radio episode on Reveal Radio, at
https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/if-you-cant-afford-a-lawyer/
. It features the public defender of
New Orleans,
Lousiana, Parish, who with his staff has decided to decline all serious
felonies so that within their increasingly limited budget (funded by Louisiana
by declining traffic fines during flood disasters), they can provide effective
counsel to as many lower-level clients as the US Constitution demands…which
means that those face more time with higher bail are left in jail without
counsel, period. He welcomes the federal
suit by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the constitutionality of
holding federal detainees who have no counsel in federal court. Meanwhile, the parish jail, under court order
to limit the local jail population, have sent detainees to other parishes,
including one at a northern corner of the state, whom a public defender cannot
manage to visit personally and so does so via the prison phone, whose security
is questionable.
To make things worse, the state
requires that those who accept public defenders have to pay $40 up front both
to have the public defender appear in court, and another $45 up front that is
forfeited if the defendant is found guilty of anything.
The program moves to follow a
public defender and a defendant in a parish where all cases are plea-bargained,
the price the defenders pay for giving detainees a speedy trial, followed up
with confirmation that this continues to be common practice as I found it to be
in 1963-65.
It is nice to find a public
defender who refuses to fail to fully defend his clients. It is a tribute that he acknowledges the
suffering he has caused those he refuses to represent, where the work involved
in preparing an adequate defense expands considerably. The program traces the efforts of one private
attorney who accepts a one-dollar fee to obtain the defendant’s alibi for
multiple attempted murder charges (photos of him out of town).
When you consider what it costs
taxpayers to detain needlessly and force innocent detainees to bargain for “lower”
but still serious prison time, the program and those it gives voice to make a
pretty good case that providing adequate assistance of counsel saves taxpayer
dollars.
I seriously recommend the
podcast of this program to anyone who wants to understand how seriously those
who cannot afford bail are often innocent, probably far, far more so than those
on death row who have been exonerated by concerted legal effort. It makes a stronger case than I’ve
encountered in any textbook for the realities of criminal defense for the
indigent, and the hope it inspires (in me at least) that even underpaid, seldom
noticed public defenders and their constitutional rights allies may have the
potential to make a huge part of incarceration in the US go away, including the
innocent in far outnumber the murder exonerations which gain so much public
attention. Love and peace, Hal
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