Experts indict indigent defense
Lax accountability, oversight criticized
Bill Rankin -
Staff
Monday, December 9, 2002
Georgia's poor who are accused of crimes enter a
financially strapped legal defense system that provides inadequate and
sometimes indifferent representation, a national consulting firm has
told a Supreme Court commission studying indigent defense.
In a report for the commission, the consulting firm found that two of
the biggest problems confronting the system are its lack of independence
from the judiciary and "a steadfast unwillingness on the part of some
judges in the state to support a system that grants this independence."
The system also lacks enough accountability and oversight to make
sure that it's working, the study said.
The
study, by the Spangenberg Group, of West Newton, Mass., is being
relied upon by the state Supreme Court commission for its own report on
Georgia's indigent defense system, which will be released Thursday. The
panel, which has been studying the system for almost two years, is
expected to issue recommendations to the Legislature on how to improve
the program.
The state's indigent defense system has been criticized as
underfunded and filled with overwhelmed attorneys who don't have the
resources to mount even the most fundamental defense. There often is no
money to hire investigators and no time for investigation. At many
courthouses, assembly-line justice is the norm, with indigent clients
meeting their lawyers for the first time on the day they plead guilty, a
plea that is entered after only a few minutes of consultation.
The Spangenberg Group, which has researched indigent defense systems
in at least 25 states, sent its experts to 19 of Georgia's 159 counties
and conducted interviews with hundreds of officials statewide. The 19
counties, which comprise 45 percent of the state's population, were not
named in the group's executive summary obtained by The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution.
None of the 19 counties visited by the firm provides sufficient
funding to assure quality representation to all indigent defendants, the
report concluded.
But while the firm said many counties had problem programs, it also
said some deserved favorable mention.
Nonetheless, the Spangenberg Group said, the indigent defense system
has no effective statewide advocate and little accountability.
"A lack of program oversight and insufficient funding are the two
chief problems underlying a complete absence of uniformity in the
administration of and quality of indigent defense services throughout
the 19 Georgia counties we studied," the report said.
In Georgia, indigent defense is administered on a county level, and
each county gets to decide which type of program it wants to use --- a
panel of appointed lawyers, lawyers hired on a contract basis or a
public defender's office. State funding accounts for only about 12
percent of what counties spend on their programs.
In most of Georgia's local indigent defense programs, few mechanisms
are in place to guarantee that defense lawyers are consistently held
accountable for the quality of representation they provide to their
clients, according to the Spangenberg Group's report.
Such shortcomings have a "deleterious impact on the consistency and
quality of representation provided to indigent defendants from county to
county."
County programs are overseen by a three-member committee comprised of
representatives of the local judiciary, bar association and county
government. "While seemingly laudatory on paper, [this committee] has
failed to effectively monitor and administer indigent defense in many
counties. The model of state grant-making and local control has not
worked."
The consulting firm also found:
- While most people interviewed support increased state funding,
some people, especially judges, opposed increased centralized
oversight.
- Because many judges have the power to appoint local lawyers to
represent indigent defendants and later approve how much the attorneys
are paid for each case, "this at the very least creates the potential
for conflicts of interest and the appearance of conflicts of
interest."
- Some judges, prosecutors, jail personnel and defense lawyers share
a common view that poor defendants facing minor charges don't want or
need lawyers, even though they are by law entitled to appointed
counsel.
- "Major problems" surround requests for funds to pay investigators
or expert witnesses in indigent cases, and there are problems with the
availability of qualified interpreters to assist many indigent
defendants and their lawyers.
- Most of the counties examined for the report have no minimum
eligibility criteria for lawyers who want to take on indigent clients.
- Some of the more "alarming" problems in the state's indigent
defense system are in the handling of juvenile cases.
Click here to see the Spangenberg report.