Public defense system crisis denies justice to poor in US courts

[undeterred]

By Naomi Sheehan Groce
18 June 2005

Approximately 5 million people who cannot afford legal representation are processed through US courts each year as indigent defendants—accused persons too poor to hire their own lawyers—and are provided public attorneys. About 75 percent of current US prison inmates were represented by court-appointed public lawyers, while two-thirds of felony defendants are indigent. At both the federal and state level, indigent defendants are found guilty at a much higher rate than defendants who are able to hire their own private attorneys.

Economic decline coupled with increased police powers in the US have contributed to swelling indigent defense caseloads and overcrowded jails in the past few years, even as violent crime levels have reached their lowest point ever recorded by the Justice Department. Many legal advocates point to falling wages, fewer forms of public assistance, rising rates of homelessness and police profiling of the poor based on race and locale as primary factors in caseload increases.

In Kentucky, for example, arrest rates have dropped each year since 2000, yet the state Department of Public Advocacy saw a 3 percent jump in caseloads in the 2001 fiscal year, 7 percent in 2002, 8.4 percent in 2003, and 12 percent in 2004, when they reached 130,000. Indigent defense caseloads in Minnesota have increased 16 percent since 2000, to more than 175,000. Virginia cases have also increased substantially each year from 2000. In the same period, statewide crime decreased, falling last year to the lowest level since 1970.

While crime in Texas has dropped, consistent with the national trend, an estimated 12 percent of the state poverty population is now arrested annually. The state has earned a reputation for injustice after several incarcerated men were exonerated through much belated DNA testing. In numerous felony cases, appointed lawyers exhibited gross ineptitude, psychological impairments, and indifference, even sleeping in the courtroom. Nevertheless, 15 of 18 bills relating to the improvement of public defense have stalled in the Texas legislature this session, including legislation requiring the creation of a committee to investigate and prevent wrongful convictions of indigent defendants. The remaining three bills await Governor Rick Perry’s review later this summer.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jun2005/defe-j18.shtml

[bemildred]

1. We have the best "Justice" system money can buy. nt