NYT: In Louisiana, the Poor Lack Legal Defense
It was arraignment morning at the Vermilion Parish courthouse, the monthly catalog of bad decisions, hot tempers, hard hearts and hard luck. Natasha George, who until recently was one of 10 lawyers defending the poor of the parish, stood before the full gallery of defendants.
“I’m the public defender in Vermilion Parish, right now the only public defender,” she said. “Due to a lack of funding for our district and our office, today we will be taking applications for our service but you will be put on a wait list.”
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The constitutional obligation to provide criminal defense for the poor has been endangered by funding problems across the country, but nowhere else is a system in statewide free fall like Louisiana’s, where public defenders represent more than eight out of 10 criminal defendants. Offices throughout the state have been forced to lay off lawyers, leaving those who remain with caseloads well into the hundreds. In seven of the state’s 42 judicial districts, poor defendants are already being put on wait lists; here in the 15th, the list is over 2,300 names long and growing.
A system that less than a decade ago was set on a course of long-needed improvement is succumbing to years of draining resources, just as the state is facing a fiscal crisis that could make things much worse. Judges throughout the state have ordered private lawyers to represent people for free, prompting objections from members of the private bar. Some lawyers being conscripted are tax and real estate lawyers without any background in courtrooms or criminal law: “No prior experience is necessary,” wrote a district judge in Lafayette in a recent plea for volunteers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/us/in-louisiana-the-poor-lack-legal-defense.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
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What is being allowed to happen in Louisiana is unconscionable.
