Prosecutors in Memphis' Shelby County are obtaining indictments in many "John Doe DNA" rape cases in the hope of stopping the clock on the statute...
Read full entry »Poor Philadelphians charged with murder with court-appointed lawyers are more often found guilty and serve longer prison terms than those represented by...
Read full entry »A legal services firm in Nevada's Washoe County is handling all indigent defense cases in one program six months for $80,000, as little as $80 per case, says Stateline.org. Such flat-fee contracting is used in more than a dozen states, a common way for counties and states to save money in hard fiscal times. They have drawn criticism from a variety of quarters. Nevada, Idaho, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have established special commissions to look at indigent defense in general and flat fees in particular.
“This type of contract creates a direct financial conflict of interest between the attorney and the client,” says David Carroll of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association. “Because the lawyer will be paid the same amount, no matter how much or how little he works on each case, it is in the lawyer’s personal interest to devote as little time as possible to each appointed case.” Critics of flat-fee contracting include the American Bar Association. The chair of Nevada’s commission, Associate Chief Supreme Court Justice Michael Cherry, says that as long as flat-fee contracting exists in Nevada, the state cannot have an equitable justice system.
By Thomas Giovanni and Laura K. Abel
On Halloween, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case illustrating how people and society suffer when indigent defense systems are chronically underfunded. In the case, Lafler v. Cooper, the Court will decide whether the Constitution is violated when an attorney’s advice to reject a plea bargain is based on a laughably poor legal error.
Read full entry »Utah’s public defender system is failing to protect citizens’ constitutional rights as Utah remains one of only two states that do not provide state funds or oversight for public defense services, says the American Civil Liberties Union. A new report, “Failing Gideon: Utah’s Flawed County-by-County Public Defender System,” focuses on 9 counties, says the Salt Lake Tribune.
Prof. Emily Chiang of the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law said that, "Utah has really fallen behind the rest of the country in terms of providing for its citizens. The main takeaway message for me is across a variety of counties, there are certain consistent failures and a lot of that goes to the state’s failure to supervise and provide any sort of guidance as to what [public defenders and the counties overseeing them] are supposed to be doing.” Only Utah and Pennsylvania do not provide state funds for public defenders. State legislators decided that each county must bear the financial and administrative responsibilities for providing public defense services. Counties in Utah on average spend $5.22 per capita on public defense services — 44 percent below the national average of $11.86 per capita, said the ACLU.
Read full entry »Prisoner rehabilitation, mental health of criminal suspects, and mentoring inmate children were among challenges handled by award-winning programs...
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The American Bar Association released a new report as a resource to help interested legal practitioners, advocates, policymakers chart new public defense strategies.
Read full entry »Phone calls between inmates and attorneys at Nashville's jail are protected by the attorney-client privilege, the jail’s recording of such calls is a “serious threat” to constitutional rights, and federal prosecutors erred when they dumped hundreds of the recorded calls on 30 defense attorneys in a sex-trafficking case, says a federal judge's ruling reported by The Tennessean.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge William J. Haynes Jr. follows a controversy that erupted when the U.S. Attorney’s office turned over 142 CDs containing evidence of an alleged prostitution ring operated by the Somali Outlaws suspected of trafficking minor females between Minnesota and Nashville for sex. Haynes froze lawyers’ access to the materials when one of the defense attorneys in the case, Patrick Frogge, discovered about 300 jail calls to his law firm were included on the CDs.
Read full entry »The Seattle Times profiles Eric Lindell, who is challenging a new state law with with broad ramifications, In cases where someone is accused of a sex crime — say, molesting children — the law allows prosecutors to introduce "propensity evidence," a fancy term for past instances in which a defendant was accused of comparable crimes, even if he wasn't charged or convicted.
Lindell is defending a man who could hardly be less sympathetic — Roger Scherner, 82, rich and remorseless, accused of molesting three generations of relatives, all young girls at the time. Jurors heard not only from a girl Scherner was convicted of molestiing, but from four women who testified Scherner had abused them when they were children. "History has a way of repeating itself," the prosecutor argued. Lindell argues that a defendant is supposed to be presumed innocent. If a jury hears of accusations in the defendant's past — particularly of rape or molestation, allegations with powerful emotional triggers — the presumption will flip.
Read full entry »States and counties struggling to balance their budgets are cutting spending on public defenders, says the Wall Street Journal. Some lawyers say the move is compromising criminal defendants' constitutional right to counsel. Providing for that right, guaranteed in a 1963 Supreme Court ruling, has grown increasingly expensive amid a dramatic rise in arrests and prosecutions in recent decades. Spending on indigent defense rose from about $1 billion in 1986 to roughly $5.3 billion in 2008, according to a 2010 report from by the American Bar Association.
The increase was partly in response to litigation challenging the adequacy of funding for indigent defense. The austerity moves stemming from funding constraints now include laying off public defenders, holding the line on salaries, and reducing spending on the defense's case investigators and staff training. "The system is not allowing us to provide competent representation," said Edward Monahan, head of the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy, which lost about $500,000, or 1.5 percent, of its funding this year, and faces an additional 2.5 percent budget cut in the coming fiscal year. Other legal services in the criminal justice system have come under the budget scalpel. Some states have fired or not replaced police officers and prosecutors "Across the country, [prosecutors' offices] have been laying people off, furloughing prosecutors, and encouraging early retirement," said Scott Burns of the National District Attorneys Association.
Read full entry »New York officials are preparing for a police ticket-fixing scandal the likes of which the city has not felt in decades, reports DNAInfo.com. For the past...
Read full entry »The Seattle Police Department will pay $32,000 to settle a lawsuit accusing the department of withholding information from defense attorneys about its handling of domestic-violence cases, reports the Seattle Times. The city attorney accidentally revealed a disputed document that showed police had instructed citizen volunteers in a victim-assistance program not to put in writing some information that could be used by defense attorneys. As a result, the police department is rewriting the manual to conform to its legal obligations.
The case raises questions about potential violations of the civil rights of defendants and should be reviewed by the U.S. Justice Department as part of its current investigation of the police department's use of force and treatment of minorities, said James Lobsenz, the attorney who represented the defense lawyers' association.
Read full entry »Chicago lawyer Sladjana Vuckovic has been hit with the unusual felony charge of bringing her cellphone into a police interview room...
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By Cara Tabachnick
Beleaguered public defenders are turning to innovative methods to save a troubled system.
Read full entry »A coalition of 40 organizations and individuals today issued "Smart on Crime," nearly 100 policy recommendations for the Obama administration and Congress across 16 criminal justice areas. The volume touches on a wide range of issues, including "overcriminalization," forensic science, juvenile justice, the death penalty, indigent defense, and executive clemency. Virginia Sloan of The Constitution Project said the report, which focuses on federal government issues, embodies "an ever-increasing and bipartisan consensus on how to fix the problems that have for too long plagued the system.”
Speaking on federal overcriminalization, Norman Reimer of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said it "threatens every American’s liberty and drains the public coffers with pointless prosecutions and unnecessary incarcerations. Among other groups supporting the project are the Innocence Project, Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, Brennan Center for Justice, and Families Against Mandatory Minimums. The groups did not necessarily endorse each other's recommendations.
http://www. besmartoncrime.org
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