August 12, 2007
Georgia
State, local officials wrestling with indigent defense
By Keich Whicker, Macon Telegraph
Even the most casual observers of television police dramas know that
whenever a person is arrested for a crime, they are promptly read their
rights and told that an attorney will be provided for them if they cannot
afford one.
Fewer people probably know where those court-appointed attorneys come from
or how their legal services are funded.
Locally, attorneys for the indigent - low-income defendants who cannot
afford legal representation - are provided by the Office of the Circuit
Public Defender.
All told, about 80 percent of the people charged with a crime in the Macon
Judicial Circuit - which includes Bibb, Crawford and Peach counties - wind
up seeking legal assistance from local public defenders, said Lee Robinson,
who heads up the public defender's office in the BB&T building in downtown
Macon.
How well the system that defends the indigent population works is a matter
of debate.
Some say that multimillion-dollar budget problems, mounting costs for the
high-profile death penalty case of accused courthouse gunman Brian Nichols
in Atlanta and legislative discord about how to run the system as proof that
indigent defense in Georgia is broken and needs to be tinkered with or
reworked entirely before it collapses.
Robinson, who has used his clout as a former Macon mayor and former state
senator to lobby for indigent defense reforms, described the current
statewide system of public defenders under which his office currently
operates as a "model" for the nation that is "second to none." But it's also
"a work in progress" that needs to be tweaked to reach its full potential,
he said.
Critics of the system take a much harsher view.
"I think it's a system that's in serious need of overhaul," said state Sen.
John Wiles, R-Marietta, who will participate later this summer in a study
committee charged with assessing indigent defense and making recommendations
to the General Assembly about its overall health and viability.
"Everything will be on the table" when the committee convenes, including
scrapping the current system - and returning to the old one, which was
largely run on a county-by-county or circuit-by-circuit basis - or allowing
multicounty circuits, such as the Macon circuit, to opt out of the state
system and set up their own outside of state control, officials said.
Under the current arrangement, single-county circuits - such as Houston
County's - do not have to participate in the state system overseen and run
by the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council from Atlanta.
THE OLD WAY OF DOING BUSINESS
Social justice and fear of a class-action lawsuit are the catalysts behind
the creation of the current public defender system, state and local
officials told The Telegraph when the old system was being scrapped.
The wrecking ball first started to batter the old way of doing things in
2000, when the Georgia Supreme Court ordered a study of the state's indigent
defense program. Less than two years later, a state commission charged with
looking at the system said it was ineffective, inadequately funded and
lacked accountability.
The commission recommended a total overhaul to fix it.
Legal experts who were critical of the old system said it processed
defendants "like products on an assembly line," with lawyers often failing
to show up for court or advising their clients after meeting with them for
only a few minutes. Such a cavalier approach, they warned, would probably
lead to the state being slapped with a class-action lawsuit.
"We were not uniform in providing adequate representation for indigent
criminal defendants," Robinson said, arguing that a defendant under the old
system might not have had an adequate litigator who understood criminal law
standing next to him in court, but rather an attorney with limited legal
knowledge of the criminal proceedings he was being asked to navigate on
behalf of his client.
That's because under the old structure, hundreds of lawyers in the
tri-county circuit with less than five years of experience were expected to
accept a couple of indigent defense cases per month to help the county
fulfill its constitutional obligations. The county then paid those
attorneys, many of whom practiced law in areas other than the criminal
defense arena, on a case-by-case basis for their service.
The arrangement was incredibly unpopular with many attorneys, Robinson and
several local attorneys said.
Some of them didn't like working on indigent cases, they said, because they
knew it reduced the amount of time they could bill more profitable clients.
Others weren't used to and didn't enjoy meeting in a jail holding area with
people accused of crimes.
Attorneys also said payment under the old system was problematic:
Oftentimes, attorneys were paid late and paid amounts that didn't cover the
total amount of work that had to be done.
Asked about weaknesses inherent in the old system, Robinson said its "lack
of quality" was dangerous, as far as the rights of the defendants were
concerned.
"We're actually specialists in the criminal procedure," he said, describing
how he thinks his office's expertise benefits the accused. "Criminal law is
as complex as tax law or anything else. ... The synergy that is created in
an office that is able to brainstorm cases and specializes in criminal
defense adds to professionalism."
Faced with such testimony and the conclusions of the state commission, the
General Assembly voted in 2004 to create a statewide council to oversee and
run a new public defender system for the 49 judicial circuits across the
state.
Under the new system, local public defenders set up their own offices and
hired staff attorneys instead of meting those cases out to private
attorneys. When it came online in 2005, the system was hailed as a "historic
transformation."
"I think you can say we went from having the ostrich with its head buried in
the sand to ... a model that the rest of the nation is looking at ... in a
short period of time," Robinson said.
However, it wasn't too long before some government officials were
complaining about the new system.
THE COST OF THE NEW WAY OF DOING BUSINESS
Of all the issues facing indigent defense, money is the chief concern.
State Sen. Johnny Grant, R-Milledgeville, earlier this year summed up the
problem elected officials are facing when he talked about the difficulties
of trying to strike a realistic balance between "how good a defense indigent
people should get" and "how much that defense should cost."
Finding that balance hasn't been easy.
Faced with a budget crunch, the state's Standards Council, which oversees
the indigent system and provides attorneys for some cases, trimmed about
$4.25 million and eliminated 41 full-time employees from its office to stay
within its $35.4 million budget for fiscal 2008, documents show.
Meanwhile, at the local level, costs are climbing.
Robinson said nearly 75 percent of his office's budget comes from local
county governments.For the three counties in the Maconcircuit, that
translates into more than $2 million in fiscal 2008, documents show.
"That shows you that something's wrong with the system," said Bibb County
Commission Chairman Charlie Bishop. "We're continually bombarded to provide
funds. ... We're trying to make sure the load is not dumped completely on
the locals. ... The question is: Who should be responsible for the cost of
(indigent defense)?"
---
Source : Macon Telegraph (Editor's note - This is the first of a two-part
look at the indigent defense system)
http://www.macon.com/198/story/110830.html
