Public Defenders
Lawyers Sue over ‘Walmartization’ of Ga. Public Defender System
Posted Jul 25, 2008, 07:55 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Critics have sued the director of Georgia’s public defender system for closing an office that handles conflicts cases in the Atlanta area and hiring contract lawyers to do the work.
Critics say replacing 16 full-time lawyers with contract workers amounts to a "Walmartization" of the legal system that harms representation for indigent defendants, the Associated Press reports. The fired full-time lawyers had handled cases posing a conflict for local public defenders.
The lawsuit, filed by the Southern Center for Human Rights, claims the contract lawyers have an incentive to spend as little time as possible on each case and to find new employment as soon as possible. The public defender system, on the other hand, has an incentive to hire lawyers who are unlikely to find other employment, the suit argues.
Lawmakers have cut funding for the public defender system from $42 million to $35 million in the last three years. System director Mack Crawford told AP that budget cuts forced him to close the office.
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Comments
Posted by kay sieveding - 4 months, 1 week, 4 days, 4 hours, 10 minutes ago
Maybe public defenders offices should be made tax deductible charities. Big Law should be encouraged to donate.
As far as the conflicts involved with handling people accused of conspiracy crimes, I think the feds do a lot of conspiracy cases that wind up in defended by the Federal Public Defender’s office.
I was in jail for 5 months without being accused of a crime or contempt in the presence of the court. The Asst AG appeared and said that the “government isn’t a part of this” but even so the magistrate and Judge Edward Nottingham ordered me to jail. In a county jail that contracts to hold federal prisoners, I met two women who were part of an indictment for drugs that included 29 people. The wife and mother of the prime suspect were held for 6 months without conviction, just on charges of conspiracy. I was also in a holding cell with a woman who said everyone who lived or was visiting on the entire floor of her apartment building was arrested. So in these cases if each defendant is to have a separate lawyer, then they would have needed 29 lawyers.
What I couldn’t understand about these 2 women is why they couldn’t get bail. The woman who was accused of being the dealer’s mother had no criminal record at all and she had owned and operated a successful restaurant. If she was not in jail, I think she could have either found private counsel or developed a defense theory related to prevailing customs in the community. She wasn’t accused of any contact with his suppliers or customers nor of moving or hiding the drugs, just not turning in her son.
Posted by kay sieveding - 4 months, 1 week, 3 days, 6 hours, 48 minutes ago
I don’t understand why there are no other comments on this article besides mine. Who gets this blog? The only thing that I can think of is that the ABA’s blog list, which may be the ABA membership, has no interest in “pursuing justice defending liberty” unless it is white collar high paid criminal defense. Maybe the ABA should change its trade name to “pursuing profits forget about justice”.