The Michigan Courts say “its the legislature & governor’s job to protect the right to counsel” – have WE heard this before? Remember Lavallee and the failure to order full funding or protect the right to counsel in Massachusetts? Or the decision in Cooper and the “right” to draft any attorney, willing or not, paid or not?
In Lavalee, the remedy no party asked for, that no supporter of the right to counsel wanted was to release the accused if no attorney could be appointed or drafted to represent them.
We either fight for the right to counsel, and the rule of law, or we lose those rights. Replacing an independent defense bar with an over worked, beholden bar is NOT the answer. There is a reason 91% of the attorneys responding to a survey in Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly voted against Gov. Patrick’s plan to move to an all public employee public defender system. Not one such system has been able to maintain decent funding or workable case limits. THIS is not to denigrate public defenders, but rather to point out the history, and protect what WE have. The Sixth Amendment right to counsel is worth defending; until you need a defender, though, you may not value what this State currently has.
See this Gideon Alert: Michigan Supreme Court Reverses its Unanimous 2-Month Old Decision in ACLU Class Action Lawsuit
The Michigan Supreme Court entered a stunning Order on July 16, 2010 reversing its unanimous decision of just two months ago in the American Civil Liberties class action lawsuit read original complaint in Duncan v. State. By entering summary judgment in favor of the defendants in the case (the State of Michigan and Governor of Michigan), the court puts an end to any opportunity for the plaintiffs to prove they are being denied the effective right to counsel as a result of Michigan’s inadequate and ineffective system of public defense. Three of Michigan’s Supreme Court judges dissented from today’s ruling, saying: “Today’s order slams the courthouse door in plaintiffs’ face for no good reason.” Instead, they are relegated to being represented in their pending cases by lawyers who lack the time, tools, training and resources to provide them with the assistance of counsel that our American system of justice promises to all.
In Michigan, as in most states throughout the country, the state Supreme Court has final responsibility for overseeing the justice system and ensuring that the rights guaranteed to everyone are applied in that system. In other words, it is the courts that we go to when we believe we are being wronged in some way and it is the courts that provide us a remedy for that wrong. The Michigan court adopted, as its reasons for its Order today, the dissenting opinion from the Court of Appeals, which says, in effect, that the courts are washing their hands of any responsibility for overseeing the public defense system and that instead “the executive and legislative branches can and should address such matters.” The ACLU has vowed to keep on fighting: “Our fight to fix the indigent defense system is far from over and we are currently weighing our legal options.”
After today’s decision, who in Michigan is responsible for making the public defense system work? The courts say that it is up to the legislative and executive branches of government. Both branches are well informed on the systemic deficiencies. On behalf of the Michigan Legislature under concurrent resolution of both chambers (SCR 39 of the 2006 Session) and under the guidance of the State Bar of Michigan, NLADA undertook a year-long study of indigent defense representation in ten sample counties. To ensure that a representative sample of counties was chosen to be studied — and to avoid criticism that either the best or worst systems were cherry-picked to skew the results — NLADA requested that an advisory group be convened to choose the sample counties. Created by SCR 39-sponsor Senator Alan Cropsey, the advisory group was composed of representatives from the State Court Administrator’s Office, the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan, the Michigan Association of Counties, the State Bar of Michigan, the State Appellate Defender Office, the Criminal Defense Attorneys of Michigan, the Supreme Court, and trial-level judges. The advisory group ensured that the county sample reflected geographic, population, economic, and defense delivery model diversity.
The NLADA report, A Race to the Bottom, opens with a re-telling of the first right to counsel case in American – the case of the Scottsboro Boys in 1932 Alabama (Powell v. Alabama) – to show that many of the systemic deficiencies identified in the Scottsboro Boys’ story permeate the criminal courts of Michigan today: judges hand-picking defense attorneys; lawyers appointed to cases for which they are unqualified; defenders meeting clients on the eve of trial and holding non-confidential discussions in public courtroom corridors; attorneys failing to identify obvious conflicts of interest; failure of defenders to properly prepare for trial and meet their ethical canons to zealously advocate for clients; inadequate compensation for those appointed to defend the accused; and, a lack of sufficient time, training, and resources to properly prepare a case in the face of the state court’s emphasis on disposing of cases as quickly as possible.
One wonders how much the financial impact of moving an early 20th century public defense model into the new millennium amidst one of the nation’s most economically depressed states had on the decision. The concurring opinion reasoned that the probable financial impact of the case could be substantial, stating the Court’s original decision was “an open invitation to the trial court to assume ongoing operational control over systems for providing defense counsel to indigent criminal defendants.. .. And with that invitation comes a blank check on the part of the judiciary to force sufficient state level legislative appropriations and executive branch acquiescence in assuming similar control over the systems in every county in this state, while nullifying the provisions of the criminal defense act and superintending authority of the Supreme Court and the State Court Administrator.” We remind the Court’s majority that our Constitutional rights extend to all of our citizens, not merely those of sufficient means. Though we understand that policy-makers must balance other important demands on their resources, the Constitution does not allow for justice to be rationed to the poor due to insufficient funds.
Reprinted with permission:
People or Organizations:
David Carroll
Author/Organization :
David Carroll
Miranda rights include, “You have the right to an attorney; if you cannot afford an attorney one will be appointed to you by the Court.”
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p>I’m pretty sure a state supreme court does not have the legal competency to overrule within its jurisdiction a SCOTUS decision. I would say the MI ruling is automatically and immediately null and void.
I don’t know any more about the Michigan situation than what’s in the post, but I am pretty confident that in Michigan, as in every other state, the courts can’t appropriate money. That’s up to the legislative and executive branches. I’m fairly confident that the MI court did not say that indigent defendants no longer have a right to an attorney (that, of course, would be beyond its competence) — I suspect this is part of a ping-pong match between the MI courts and the legislature regarding the responsibility of how to pay for indigent defense.
Real representation requires an attorney client relationship, the attorney actually meeting with the client, doing due diligence, and investigating the case. In Michigan, Louisiana, and in Virginia, and many other places caseloads of 400, 600 or more and representation that in fact is not “real” or doing the job is all too often the norm. Being appointed an attorney who doesn’t meet with you, doesn’t do an independent investigation of the case, and cannot say “no” when an impossible caseload is heaped upon their heads is not REALLY the “Gideon” Sixth Amendment right to counsel in action. That is why NLADA is involved, and the ‘remedy’ in Laveallee in this state is no remedy at all.
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p>I am monitoring this issue nationally, to the extent I can make time. But services to the poor, including the criminal accused, foster children, those with disabilities are taking serious his and the standard for mandated constitutional representation under the Gideon case is under serious attack and many states.