Idaho Supreme Court should intervene in ‘disastrous’ public defense reform, ACLU says

The American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho filed an emergency motion asking the Idaho Supreme Court to intervene in the state’s new public defense system, which the ACLU called a “disastrous step backward.”

The organization reported “chaotic instances” under the new state system in which people were jailed for weeks or months without being able to speak to their state-appointed defense attorneys. The ACLU asked the court to order the release of defendants who have not been able to contact their attorneys in time.

“This is an obvious and egregious violation of the defendant’s right to legal representation,” Leo Morales, executive director of the ACLU of Idaho, said in a news release Thursday.

A spokesperson for the State Public Defender’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ACLU said “persistent problems were widespread” in rural and urban areas of the state, ACLU spokesperson Rebecca De Leon told the Idaho Statesman.

The new public defense system came into effect in October. It was the Legislature’s response to an ACLU class-action lawsuit filed in 2015, which accused the state of violating its constitutional obligation to provide legal representation to defendants in criminal and juvenile cases.

The reform consolidated the public defender services of the state’s 44 counties under one state umbrella and aimed to equalize salaries and standardize case management and other processes.

The new office aims to “create system efficiencies” and “unified standards” across the state, according to its website. Pay increased for nearly 80% of the state’s public defenders, but 15% of the highest-paid attorneys took pay cuts, especially in larger counties like Ada County, said Patrick Orr, spokesman for the Public Defender’s Office. from the State, in an email at the end of December. With those cuts came “massive resignations” of public defenders and their support staff, the ACLU said.

“We lost some long-time public defenders in Ada County with the salary adjustment,” Orr told the Statesman in the email. “That was difficult; we didn’t want to lose a single attorney in the transition.”

Other parts of the transition were also fraught with obstacles, including technology issues, disorganization and declining office morale, the Idaho Capital Sun reported.

At a mid-December meeting of Ada County commissioners and the county’s state legislators, Chairman Rod Beck said delays resulting from changes in the process and resignations by some attorneys would have a “cascading effect,” lengthening jail stays in the county. already overcrowded cell. He called the transition “death by a thousand cuts.”

Some judges have begun dismissing cases because the state could not provide an attorney to represent someone facing charges.

Months before the transition, “lawyers warned SPD leaders that pay cuts and restrictive contracts would drive lawyers out of the system,” the ACLU said. presentation says.

Now, “SPD attorneys report that there are simply no more attorneys left to appoint, that the rights of defendants are at risk, and that the best the Idaho system can offer at this time is the ineffective assistance of counsel.” , according to the file.

“As a result, countless indigent defendants have been suffering: appearing in court without a lawyer, trying again and again to get someone from SPD to tell them who was appointed to defend them, and worrying about how they could receive effective representation (or representation). at all) in cases that have been pending for months,” the file adds.

The plaintiffs in the 2015 lawsuit won their case, but the ACLU and its partner attorneys took the case back to court, asking him to declare that the state had failed to address “pervasive” problems in its public defender system, De León said. . The judge refused in February, pointing to the imminent launch of the State Public Defender’s Office and saying that “time will tell if the State will keep the promises it made.”

The ACLU’s emergency motion, filed Dec. 23, is part of an appeal of that decision. The concerns raised by the ACLU “did not magically dissipate” after the state passed a law to fund a state public defenders office, its appeal says. “A restructuring of the system is far from solving “long-standing” problems such as funding and staff shortages and excessive workloads, it reads.

“Despite winning time and time again in the Idaho Supreme Court, we are now back to trying to avoid a total disaster,” Morales said in the statement.