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Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Courts - "Key New York Suit Calls Public Defender Programs Inadequate"
That is the headline to this story today in the NY Times, reported by William Glaberson. It begins:
A class-action suit to be argued next week in New York’s highest court has become a test of a national strategy by civil liberties groups to challenge what they say are failed public defender programs in many states.See also the WSJ Law Blog's Ashby Jones' entry today headed "Is Gideon Alive and Well? New York Case Says Absolutely Not."Because an estimated 80 percent of felony defendants in large states are too poor to hire their own lawyers, and because the case is being watched around the nation, the case has the potential to alter the shape of the criminal justice system.
Filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union, the lawsuit is a broad challenge to a patchwork system that has been described by decades of studies and commissions as dysfunctional, underfinanced and “in crisis,” with often poorly trained and poorly supervised lawyers handling huge caseloads. It says indigent clients have been failed by their appointed lawyers all around the state.
“The eyes of the nation will be on New York as it decides this crucial issue,” a brief filed by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers argues.
As the system works now, defendants who are unhappy with their appointed lawyers can generally make those claims only after they are convicted. The court then reviews each appeal case by case. But the civil liberties lawyers argue that a broad review is necessary because the arrangement has not addressed systemic failings that unconstitutionally leave tens of thousands of defendants without meaningful representation in every part of the state.
The state has fought hard against the suit, which was first filed in 2007, arguing that if New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, allows it to proceed — and a court later uses the case to order the state to upgrade the public defender system — it would be a judicial invasion of the authority of the Legislature and the governor. Such improvements, some lawyers say, could cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
In one filing, the state argues that by appointing lawyers it fulfills its constitutional obligations. “It cannot be seriously contended that plaintiffs have been denied the right to counsel,” the state says. The state’s defender system includes Legal Aid Societies, private lawyers who are appointed by the courts, and local public defender offices.
Next Tuesday, the Court of Appeals is to consider whether the suit can proceed. A half-dozen friend-of-the-court briefs portray the scheduled argument as a critical step in defining the meaning of a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in 1963. The decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, declared that the Constitution required states to provide lawyers for indigent defendants.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 16, 2010 02:11 PM
Posted to Courts in general