The last few months have brought us a crashing economy and massive government bailouts to the tune of 34 trazillion dollars (it’s a real amount). As banks fail and the auto industry fails and the real estate market plumbs the depths of depression, an equally frightening scenario is unfolding in states throughout the country: the crumbling of indigent defense systems.

Just like the economy, however, this failure of the legal system should come as no surprise. Back in May, I wrote about the mess in Minnesota (and followed up with a June post about Florida) [full coverage here] and our sister blog PD Stuff has been covering money problems for years. Nevada will face some problems starting next year. Things don’t look all rosy in Connecticut, either, as legal aid is taking a hit.

The NYT piece is rightly drawing a lot of attention in the blawgosphere. Bob Ambrogi and J. Craig Williams devoted their recent podcast to this problem by interviewing the Miami public defender Bennett Brummer and NLADA research director David Carroll. [The podcast is at the end of this post.]

This is a very serious problem. As funding for indigent defense declines with no corresponding declines in prosecutions, defendants will experience greater wait times for their trials, resources will be stretched thin and the criminal justice system will produce far more wrongful convictions. There will not be enough time to conduct proper investigations, to hire experts and, frankly, to go to trial.

If a public defender has an obscene number of clients, a number which grows every day, there will a lot of pressure to resolve cases without much advocacy. This is where the rest of the justice system needs to step up. Prosecutors need to take their duty to seek justice more seriously and drop the pursuit of “wins”. Judges need to take a more mediation-oriented approach and broker fair deals and not permit the State to demand the moon.

From the NYTimes piece:

Mr. Jones, in between hushed conversations with clients in the hallway or the holding pen, said he wished he had more time to investigate cases and could go to trial more often, rather than accepting the police version of events and then, after a short discussion, helping his clients make a life-altering deal.

“I’d love to have time to visit the crime scene and do more legal research,” Mr. Jones said.

No defendant should ever have to put up with this. No lawyer should ever be in a position where he is advising a client based on incomplete information. This is not only a money issue, but a Constitutional issue. Skimping on public defenders offices now will only postpone the problem, because there will be a greater number of successful habeas corpus petitions or appeals, which will result in new prosecutions.

Or worse: Federal courts will have to step in and force the state to pay for adequate funding, something no one really wants. So you know, might as well bail them out now, right Prez-elect Obama? Seriously, who better to give federal money to? The banks that set up their own downfall? The auto-industry that refused to innovate? Or the hardworking public defenders that protect your and my rights, day in and day out, doing a community service for little money?

But these are tough economic times. Money is drying up. Perhaps this is a very appropriate opportunity to look at truly reforming the criminal justice system. Let’s provide more alternatives to incarceration and true rehabilitation, let’s not keep non-violent offenders in jail any longer than we absolutely need to. As costs of the prison complex go down, there will be more money to fund the defense of the innocent man. We should start to look at the exorbitant sentences handed down by judges. Do we need a 40 year sentence when a 15 year sentence should do? Do we have to be punitive in our punishments? Must people be on probation for 35 years? A true reformation of the criminal justice system would go a long way towards alleviating these woes.

Then, of course, there’s the death penalty.

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