In any single community, attorneys defending the poor may assert that they are the exception to the findings in a recent report.
Indeed, indigent defendants in some places might get as good a representation from court-appointed attorneys as they would if there was a staff of government attorneys whose sole job was to represent accused criminals who cannot afford to hire their own lawyer.
Statewide, however, it’s generally not a level playing field between the prosecution and the defense when poor people are in the dock.
As an exhaustive report released last week asserts, the hodge-podge system used in Mississippi produces too often court-appointed attorneys with too many cases to effectively handle, too few resources to tap into when preparing for trial, and a reimbursement system that financially motivates them to only spend so much time on a case, regardless of its complexity.
State Supreme Court Justice James W. Kitchens, who chaired the tax force that commissioned the study of the various ways Mississippi meets its constitutional responsibility to provide counsel to indigent defendants, put it this way:
“There are many very dedicated lawyers out there who are taking court-appointed cases, who are doing their very best to provide the same quality of services that they provide to paying clients. But on the whole, the system as it is now has a lot of shortcomings, and it’s more expensive than a well-organized and adequately funded public defender system would be.”
There is some question whether a statewide public defender office — organized along the same lines as the district attorney’s offices that handle prosecutions — would be less expensive than using private attorneys. Is there anything the government does that is less expensive than the private sector?
But that’s a discussion for another day.
The most important point is this: The American criminal justice system is supposed to be based on the premise that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. That premise is endangered when those who are trying to prove guilt have a manpower or tactical advantage over those who are trying to disprove it.
There is a huge amount of research that shows those who can’t afford an attorney are much more likely to be convicted than those who can. Why would that be, other than the quality of counsel provided to them?
The follow-up question is what Mississippi should do about this inequity — and how much a better public-defender system would cost.
