Indigent-defense reform made little progress in Legislature

Posted 12:56PM on Saturday 20th April 2002 ( 23 years ago )

ATLANTA - Georgia attorneys concerned about the state's spotty record of providing legal counsel for poor people accused of crimes will have to wait another year, even though officials concede the state is prone to lawsuits over its uneven public defense system. About 80 percent of criminal defendants in Georgia are too poor to hire a lawyer, but the process of finding and paying for one is left almost entirely up to the counties. Legal watchdog groups and the State Bar of Georgia argue that a county-by-county system leads to wide disparities in the quality of legal counsel. A Coweta County lawsuit challenging Georgia's system is pending, and Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher warned lawmakers earlier this year that more suits are on the way if sweeping reforms aren't instituted. But the process of overhauling the system has been frustratingly slow for many attorneys. ``The consensus is that Georgia does not meet Constitutional standards,'' said David Carroll of the Washington-based National Legal Aid & Defender Association. ``You may get very good defense, or you may get incompetent defense, it all depends on where you get arrested.'' A Supreme Court commission was assembled in 2001 to suggest reforms for this year's legislative session. In August, the commission announced it would need another year to make a report, and the Legislature came and went without doing anything about the issue. The state agency that helps fund public defenders asked lawmakers for a $4.7 million budget boost. The Georgia Indigent Defense Council ended up with $900,000 in additional funds. ``It's approaching crisis stage,'' said Robert Shapiro, director of the council. ``We're not putting the resources we need into this.'' House Speaker Tom Murphy, D-Bremen, introduced a bill to require counties to set aside at least 25 percent of their court income for indigent defense, but the bill stalled amid concerns it wouldn't solve the problem of some counties offering better service than others. The State Bar recommended earlier this month that the state bear the full expense of providing lawyers for poor people accused of crimes. Currently the state covers about $7.3 million of the $48.9 million counties spend on indigent defense. Twenty-one counties have a full-time public defender office; 63 employ programs in which a lawyer or group of lawyers works on a contract basis; and 75 counties use systems in which a defendant gets a lawyer appointed from a pool of available attorneys. The State Bar has recommended a more centralized plan since at least 1965, when attorneys first said state government should bear the full cost, a method used in 25 other states. ``We really didn't do then what we should've done to create a workable, equitable system. Now it's 27 years later and we're still trying to reform it,'' said Wilson DuBose, an Atlanta attorney and chairman of the State Bar's indigent defense committee. Legal watchdog groups point to local judges and a tightfisted Legislature for slowing down Georgia's shift to a centralized plan for serving poor defendants. A statewide plan could cost millions and shift the power to appoint attorneys away from Superior Court judges. Other opponents are lawyers who say the job of defending poor people is an old-fashioned moral obligation that needs no state intervention. Murphy, who still practices law, compared the duty to a doctor's Hippocratic oath. ``That's part of your training as a lawyer. I don't know that the state should take it over. I defended a murder case once for $150, and that defendant still got the best of me,'' he said. State Bar members said they were hopeful that indigent defense would be a bigger priority next session, after the Supreme Court commission has made its report. That report is expected to suggest at least some centralization, which would require action by the Legislature. Some of the most powerful lawmakers, including Murphy and Senate Appropriations Chairman George Hooks, are likely to oppose a complete state takeover of indigent defense. ``It should be a shared responsibility,'' said Hooks, D-Americus. Meanwhile, defense attorneys warn Georgia's system is in serious disarray and will not withstand lawsuits until the level of service for poor defendants is the same across the state. ``The system is an embarrassment to the state of Georgia,'' said Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, a plaintiff in the Coweta County case. ``The convenient excuse is, 'Well, we have this commission, let's wait and see what it says.' But how much longer are we going to wait? What about those people who are in a system we know is bad right now? There's no excuse for how bad it is.''

http://accesswdun.com/article/2002/4/195741