WASHINGTON — A landmark trial will get underway in the New York State Supreme Court on Tuesday, giving a formal hearing to decades’ worth of complaints that the state’s public defense system is illegal and even unconstitutional.
Interest in the case goes well beyond New York, however, given the chronic funding problems that public defenders in many states have faced for years. Observers say that state attorneys general across the country will now be keenly watching both the court’s decision and New York’s subsequent response.
In recognition of the national implications of the case, the Department of Justice formally weighed in on the matter last week. This was the first time the department had offered an opinion on public defense since the Supreme Court enshrined this right a half-century ago.
“The Department of Justice’s intervention is spot on, because the real problem is the issue of lawyers in name only. The resources are so depleted in New York and have been for so long that lawyers are, for instance, unable to interview their clients or properly investigate the facts – and that has been going on for years and years,” Jonathan Gradess, executive director of the New York State Defenders Association, told MintPress News.
“This is a national problem. I had hoped the governor would see his way clear to untie this Gordian knot and come up with a solution here with ramifications for the whole nation. But as yet, that hasn’t happened.”
At the heart of the case is a twofold concern. First, poor defendants are languishing in prison far longer than they should before going to trial. Second, they are not receiving full legal representation once their cases are heard, due to the crushingly high caseloads that the state’s public defenders have needed to take on.
Critics maintain that this is because, since the mid-1960s, New York state has pushed off its responsibility to provide public representation onto underfunded counties, and then has failed to provide adequate oversight. Those critics have included some of the state’s highest judicial officers and, now, the federal government.
Although it is not a party to the case and did not take sides, the Justice Department’s intervention, known as a statement of interest, has been interpreted as siding strongly with the plaintiffs. Noting the lack of resources and significant workloads that have characterized New York’s public defense system, the department suggested that all states could eventually be held responsible for failing to make available adequate legal representation for defendants who don’t have enough money to hire a lawyer.
The statement of interest also referenced a comment that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder made last year in regard to the landmark 1962 Supreme Court decision, known as Gideon v. Wainwright, that established the right to legal representation. “It’s time to reclaim Gideon’s petition,” the Justice Department’s filing quotes Holder as saying, “and resolve to confront the obstacles facing indigent defense providers.”
“Structurally incapable”
The current case, known as Hurrell-Harring v. State of New York, goes back to a 2006 report by a state commission headed by a former New York chief judge, Judith Kaye. Looking at the state of public defense, the commission’s findings were scathing.
“[T]he indigent defense system in New York State is both severely dysfunctional and structurally incapable of providing each poor defendant with the effective legal representation that he or she is guaranteed,” the Kaye Commission report noted. “In actuality, it is a misnomer to call it a ‘system’ at all.”
The report offers case studies of poor defendants forced to wait in prison for months just to be visited by their legal defense. In some cases, defense attorneys appointed by the county failed to show up for court hearings. While New York did create a new Office of Indigent Legal Services in 2010, critics claim the agency remains unable to guarantee funding to the counties.
“These issues have now been pending for seven years, since the commission made its recommendations. And during that time, a quarter-million people have gone through these counties’ unconstitutional systems,” the New York State Defenders Association’s Gradess said.
“We’ve urged the creation of a robust state-level public defense system, which is what Judge Kaye recommended in 2006. If they don’t do that within the next couple of days, I believe this case will be tried and New York will lose.”
The lawsuit slated to get underway on Tuesday was filed a year after the release of the Kaye Commission report, brought in part by the New York chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Although it was based on the commission’s findings, advocates say there have been numerous reports over the years detailing the extent of dysfunction in New York’s public defense system.
“This is an incredibly important case, and the first of its kind in the nation,” Mariko Hirose, a staff attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union, told MintPress.
“People have been languishing in jail for weeks and even months, often without knowing what’s happening with their criminal cases or even what the charges are. Poor people are standing across the state of New York without an advocate by their side.”
Hirose is quick to note that the quality of county-appointed lawyers isn’t necessarily what’s in question. Rather, a chronic lack of funding is making it impossible for public defenders to do their jobs. She says public defense attorneys in the state are often handling five times the caseloads that regulations suggest.
In one county, Hirose’s office found in a report released last month, 20 percent of public defenders spent more time on their billing statements than interviewing the client in question. Another county encourages its public defense lawyers to spend no more than 10 minutes with each client.
“We definitely recognize that public defense attorneys are victims of the system,” Hirose said. “Many, if not most, are diligent in striving to protect the rights of their clients. But it’s impossible to do that when the caseloads are so high and the public defenders can’t get access to investigators, evidence – even the clients.”
Nationwide crisis
Of course, the New York case is generating national attention because states across the country have experienced chronically underfunded public defense systems for decades, even if others haven’t gone so far as to shift the responsibility for the system to the county level.
“Indigent defense is in a state of crisis nationwide … States, counties, and cities are failing to provide sufficient resources to ensure that constitutional rights are being preserved,” Timothy Young, with the National Association for Public Defense, wrote in recent analysis sent to MintPress.
“The source of the crisis is clear: the states are not providing sufficient resources for public defense organizations to hire enough lawyers, investigators, social workers, experts, and other professionals to meet the requirements of the Constitution. The result is our members are structurally disabled from being able to meet their obligations.”
Young warns that the results of this “massive failure” include inaccurate verdicts and a weakening of public’s trust in the judicial system.
In Louisiana, advocates are looking in particular at the impact that an underfunded public defense system is having on juveniles. Louisiana law is unique in its view of incarceration as treatment, and allows juvenile offenders to be released when a judge decides they have been rehabilitated.
“Certainly the public defense system in general is woefully underfunded in Louisiana, and the disparity between the funding of public defense and the district attorney offices is quite pronounced,” Meredith Angelson, a staff attorney in New Orleans with the Southern Law Poverty Center, the legal advocacy group, told MintPress.
“Juvenile public defenders in particular have not been able to properly carry out representing children after conviction and incarceration. There are simply too few of them, and they’re not able to visit the children and dedicate the resources to represent them.”
As a result, Angelson notes, children in Louisiana are serving sentences that are years longer than they should be. “There just aren’t enough resources to provide these children with effective lawyers,” she said.
Now, the outcome of the New York trial could potentially send a new message across the country about the state’s responsibility in providing adequate legal representation. Hurrell-Harring v. State of New York is scheduled to open Tuesday and is expected to run for at least a month.