Posted on Saturday, 05.05.07
Legal plan for poor faulted
BY SUSANNAH A. NESMITH AND TRENTON DANIEL
The Legislature has quietly overhauled the way attorneys are paid to represent poor people, creating a new system that courthouse regulars say is underfunded and will leave many impoverished defendants and families without competent attorneys.
The new system also requires counties to spend more on indigent defense -- even while they struggle to cut costs amid threatened cuts in property tax revenues. Miami-Dade County expects to spend $800,000 this year that it hadn't planned for.
The measure, approved without dissent in either house, sets up regional offices of state-paid lawyers to handle criminal cases that county Public Defenders Offices can't take because of legal conflicts. The new offices also will represent parents accused by the state Department of Children and Families of abandoning, abusing or neglecting their children.
By Oct. 1, the new offices will replace a system of appointing private attorneys for those cases -- appointments that Legislators say drive costs too high.
But judges and defense attorneys say the Legislature didn't allocate nearly enough money for the new offices. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Stanford Blake, chief judge for criminal courts, predicted the new system would cause "havoc."
"The trains have left the building. I hope they realize the tracks aren't completed, " he said.
Costs for those cases were shifted from the counties to the state three years ago, and lawmakers have balked at the bill -- more than $60 million for defense attorneys and defense costs.
COST SAVINGS CITED
Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, who sponsored the bill, defended his plan, saying state-employed attorneys won't cost as much as private attorneys since they will earn a salary instead of hourly pay.
"The bottom line is we did this because we believe we can save $50 million, " said Crist. "It's going to stop a fast-spending funding train."
Each regional office will have a director appointed by the governor who will earn $80,000; the attorneys working in the office will earn less.
The legislation provides for 384 staffers: attorneys, secretarys, paralegals and investigators for the five offices, which will have to handle more than 33,000 cases a year.
Critics call that unrealistic.
"Numerically I do not see how this is possible, especially when they don't have adequate salaries, they don't have adequate staff, " said Miami-Dade's chief assistant public defender, Carlos Martinez.
Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein also predicted the system would fail because experienced attorneys won't work so cheaply.
"When you do justice on the cheap, the price that you pay is innocent people going to jail and guilty people going free, " he said.
Some figure the cleanup will have to be done in the appellate courts when convictions are overturned.
"Either we're going to give people fair trials now or we're going to pay a lot of money for not giving them fair trials later, " said Miami defense attorney Milt Hirsch.
If convictions are overturned, victims will have to relive their trauma during new trials, said Assistant State Attorney Abbe Rifkin.
"What you're saying to the victim, 'that scar that was healed, you're going to have to rip that one open again, ' " she said. "This is going to be a nightmare."
The new system provides for appointed attorneys in cases where both public defenders and the regional offices have conflicts. The law includes caps on fees that attorneys call unreasonably low -- from $1,000 for misdemeanors to $15,000 for death penalty cases. Judges can exceed the caps if attorneys prove the case was extraordinary, but the bill makes that more difficult.
Under the current system, some appointed attorneys have billed the state more than $150,000 for death-penalty cases, which are complex and require, by law, specially trained attorneys.
NO DEATH CASES
Under the new caps, lawyers such as Bruce Fleisher of Miami said they no longer would accept court appointments to death penalty cases -- which he called long and "gut-wrenching."
"No one's going to do that for $15,000, " he said.
Attorney and civil rights activist H.T. Smith worries that the system is inherently unfair to the poor.
"O.J. Simpson will get a $7 million defense and will walk around Miami playing golf and some poor slob who's innocent will get a $15,000 defense and in the year 2025, we'll just be getting the hard evidence that he was innocent all along, " he said.
Sen. Crist, the bill's sponsor, said he'd be willing to tweak the system if critics' predictions come true.
The Florida Association of Counties fought the measure because each county with a regional office will have to lease the office space and provide everything from computers to paper clips.
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