New House subcommittee to work on public defender reform

(Photo: mindgutter via Flickr.com)

LANSING — The Michigan Campaign for Justice held a birthday celebration at the state Capitol Wednesday for the 46th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, which established the right to counsel at both the federal and state levels for all criminal defendants. The gift for the group turned out to be the formation of a new House Judiciary subcommittee that will work to reform Michigan’s public defender system.

House Speaker Andy Dillon (D-Redford Township) and House Judiciary Chairman Mark Meadows (D-East Lansing) have formed the Subcommittee on Indigent Defense, to be chaired by Rep. Bob Constan (D-Dearborn Heights). Laura Sager, the director of the Michigan Campaign for Justice, was pleased with the new subcommittee: “The Michigan Campaign for Justice is very much looking forward to working with legislators as they move forward to consider how to craft reform legislation to fix Michigan’s failing public defense system.”

As Michigan Messenger reported last month, a recent study of Michigan’s public defender system found that the state failed to meet even minimal standards for public defense set by the American Bar Association (ABA). The report said that the state’s failed system, with overworked and underpaid public defenders handling as much as seven times as many cases as they could reasonably handle, amounted to a “constitutional crisis.” The study found that Detroit, for instance, only had five part-time public defenders handling between 2,400 and 2,800 cases a year, spending an average of 32 minutes per case.

The new subcommittee will hold hearings on how best to reform that failed system. The goal, Sager said, is a system that provides adequate funding to meet the ABA’s 11 standards for a just and fair public-defender system. Committee members hope to have legislation crafted and passed in the current legislative session.

“We’ve got a ways to go in terms of the House and Senate process,” Sager said. “But we’re really excited about the energy and the interest on the part of legislators so far and we’re rapidly moving to talk to people on both sides of the aisle in both chambers to make sure this is a bicameral, bipartisan effort.”

The Michigan Campaign for Justice is a coalition of groups from across the political spectrum, from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Michigan Family Forum, a diverse cross-section that has helped the coalition get a receptive audience on both sides of the aisle in the state Legislature.

But with the state’s finances in such dire straits, the main obstacle to passing public-defender reform legislation will likely be funding. Campaign for Justice said that a minimum of $40 million in additional spending will be necessary to meet minimal standards, funds that will be difficult to come by at a time when other important programs are already on the chopping block.