Public Interest

Louisiana Legislature Attempting To Cure What Ails Public Defenders

This bill may restore basic public-defender services in Louisiana while increasing support for abolishing the death penalty.

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handcuffs justice gavelWe all know that public defenders are chronically underfunded.  Nowhere is that clearer than in Louisiana, where (as I’ve covered here several times before), due to underfunding, the New Orleans Public Defenders began refusing cases and then were sued by the Louisiana ACLU.  This is, more or less, the ultimate damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario, because in either case there are more likely than not Sixth Amendment violations occurring.

I’ve also said before that perhaps the Louisiana legislature should take heed of this mess and kick some money to the state’s parish public defender offices.

Well, it looks like the legislature has done just that — sort of.

A bill aimed at changing how Louisiana pays for indigent criminal defense, HB1137, has already passed the Louisiana House and (if my read of Louisiana legislative shorthand is correct) is scheduled for a final Senate vote today.  The bill does a few things, among them changing the membership of the board that decides how to disburse the state’s indigent criminal defense dollars.  But most of its magic is contained in this pellucid passage beginning at page 8, line 5:

The board shall dedicate and disburse at least sixty-five percent of the entirety of its annual budget and its funds in the Louisiana Public Defender Fund as defined in Subsection A of this Section each fiscal year to the district defender offices and their indigent defender funds as defined in R.S. 15:168(A) in the various judicial districts throughout the state.

In other words, at least 65% of the money allocated by the state for public defense has to go to local public defender offices.

The bill has received overwhelming support from Louisiana legislators — it passed the House by a vote of 93 to 3.  But it has drawn mixed reactions from other interested groups.

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The Louisiana District Attorneys Association, for example, strongly supports the bill. The Association’s Executive Director E. Pete Adams explained this support to the Louisiana Record:

There is mounting evidence that the board has been and is operating in a fiscally irresponsible manner. … The chief public defender recently admitted that, if the board would direct only 60 percent of the state appropriated $33 million to local (public defenders), there would be no restriction of services in any district. Why on Earth would they not have already done so to avoid stalling hundreds, perhaps thousands of cases?

Louisiana’s Chief Public Defender, James Dixon, unsurprisingly disagrees — and opposes the bill.  He’s quoted by the Associated Press:  “This really is not about the board. This is a funding crisis.  The problem here is diminishing local funds, and nothing in this bill addresses that.”

The bill’s lead sponsor, Representative Sherman Mack, takes a diplomatic approach. Here he is quoted in the Livingston Parish News: “They say the system isn’t broke, but it needs to be fixed. I’m not saying they intentionally did anything wrong, but the intent of the bill was to make sure the state public defender money was going where it was intended to go.”

News reports on the bill are unanimous that one of its goals is to divert money away from death-penalty defense and toward the more run-of-the-mill cases that local public defenders’ offices are struggling to staff.  As of now, approximately 50% of Louisiana’s public defense dollars go to local public defenders’ offices, while 28% go to capital cases. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that “[Louisiana Public Defender James] Dixon and others warned that providing less money for death penalty defense would slow those legal proceedings.”

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In fact, all this wrangling over the cost of indigent criminal defense in Louisiana has had some fascinating repercussions.  That Times-Picayune article I quoted above also notes that one state representative, “a conservative Republican and retired sheriff,” has publicly “wondered aloud” whether the death penalty is “worth the expense anymore,” and is now considering “getting rid of the death penalty in Louisiana for good.”  Apparently he’s not the only one.  

So to sum up: this bill may restore basic PD services in Louisiana while increasing support for abolishing the death penalty?  Sounds like a win to me.

Sam Wright is a dyed-in-the-wool, bleeding-heart public interest lawyer who has spent his career exclusively in nonprofits and government. If you have ideas, questions, kudos, or complaints about his column or public interest law in general, send him an email at PublicInterestATL@gmail.com.

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