Post by pebbles on Mar 30, 2007 17:14:51 GMT -5
Thursday, March 22, 2007
People in this country who have a consti tutional right to a lawyer when charged with a federal crime, have also long been granted that right when accused under state law -- whether or not they could pay for it.
"Even the intelligent and educated layman has small and sometimes no skill in the science of law," Justice George Sutherland wrote for the Supreme Court in 1932, in Powell v. Alabama.
"Left without the aid of counsel he may be put on trial without a proper charge and convicted upon incompetent evidence or evidence irrelevant to the issue or otherwise inadmissible," Sutherland wrote. He needs the guiding hand of counsel at every step in the proceedings; "without it, though he be not guilty, he faces the danger of conviction because he does not know how to establish his innocence."
In Cuyahoga County, lawyers who represent poor defendants are often paid such a pittance that it compromises that historic right.
Fees paid to lawyers assigned to represent defendants in Common Pleas Court are lower than they were a quarter-century ago.
A lawyer assigned today to defend someone accused of murder gets, at most, $2,700. In 1984, that lawyer was paid up to $2,750. In today's dollars, that's the equivalent of $5,386, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's consumer price index calculator.
Defending someone accused today of voluntary manslaughter pays, at most, $900. In 1984, it paid $1,000; in today's dollars, that would be $1,960.
The low pay pressures lawyers who are assigned to defend cases to keep them long enough to reap the maximum fee, then plea bargain. It doesn't pay to go to trial, even if a lawyer knows his client is innocent.
If, on the other hand, the defendant is guilty and wants to plea bargain right away, the current setup discourages it. Cases drag on because the assigned lawyers can't collect the maximum fee until they have billed a certain number of hours.
Judges acknowledge that the system is flawed. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason does, too, and recently suggested raising the pay rates. But his plan would lift them only to the level at which they stood in 2002, when the court made a "temporary reduction."
Mason also proposes letting the assigned defenders collect most of their fee, even when pleading quickly on behalf of their clients, which would move the simpler cases along.
Assigned counsel get six in 10 of the cases in which defendants cannot afford a lawyer. And they get a quarter of the representation on death-penalty cases.
Public defenders, who are county employees, get the rest.
Though on staff -- and not free-lancers, like the assigned counsel -- public defenders are paid less than prosecutors. Defenders at the lowest scale made $40,800 last year, while the lowest-paid prosecutors got $49,000. The gap is bigger among more senior lawyers: One of the highest-paid public defenders makes $81,884. One of the highest-paid prosecutors makes $109,574.
Defenders and prosecutors have different benefit packages. Defenders are unionized; prosecutors aren't. But as recently as 10 years ago, their pay ranges were the same.
It's past time to significantly raise the pay of assigned counsel in Cuyahoga County, and to seriously review raising the pay public defenders earn. The county commissioners should start the ball rolling.
Otherwise, how can we believe that justice truly is being served?
www.cleveland.com/editorials/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/opinion/117455266166790.xml&coll=2