Chandra Bolzelko writes in Reuters concerning capital cases:
Removing self-representation as a possibility in capital cases could and should be corrected for with some type of minimum standards for capital defenders. Few defendants in death penalty trials can afford a lawyer. The lawyers that are appointed for them are often unprepared, unqualified and otherwise problematic. A 2000 analysis of 461 capital cases found that 25 percent of death penalty defendants in Texas were represented by attorneys with disciplinary histories. One-fifth of people who were executed in Washington state were assigned counsel that had been or was later disbarred. The qualified attorneys who should be appointed need to be adequately compensated, but they’re not.
This denigration of the right to effective assistance of counsel is what makes it easy to allow defendants like Dylann Roof to represent themselves. If appointed counsel won’t do much better, why not let people exercise their rights under Faretta and get themselves killed? Especially when the trial will add glorious sound bites and scenes of an allegedly racist killer getting to cross-examine his African-American victims.
In the name of individual liberties that we’ve already stopped protecting, we will watch Roof’s slow, elaborate, taxpayer-funded self-harm unfold. The trial of the Charleston church shooter places us at a crossroads of Constitution and conscience. If we overturn Faretta v. California and prevent defendants in capital cases from defending themselves while providing them with qualified and paid counsel, we won’t have to choose.
I don’t doubt Chandra is accurately alluding to capital cases as entertainment, as they are for some folks who don’t trouble themselves with questions of actual guilt, or for that matter just what went wrong with the alleged perpetrator’s upbringing – ignoring the possibility of Nature being guilty, of course. Having sat on a court case involving alleged violence and drugs, I do remember the gravity of deciding the future of a young man; I would not care, in the least, to sit on a capital case.
Which all reminds me that the funding for public defenders cut by Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) doesn’t ever seem to have been restored. MPR has an updated report on Minnesota public defenders:
In Minnesota, the public defender system is the largest user of the state’s court system, representing about 150,000 cases per year.
According to the Legislative Auditor, the system operates with about 65 percent of the staff it should, thanks primarily to budget cuts under the Pawlenty administration.
A typical public defender here has 10 minutes to meet with a client for the first time “to evaluate the case, explain the client’s options and the consequences of a conviction or plea, to discuss a possible deal with the prosecuting attorney, and allow the client to make a decision on how to proceed,” according to the Minnesota Board of Public Defense.
I know a public-spirited gentleman & lawyer who aspires to be a public defender. He’s been aspiring for several years now. Between inadequate funding and outdated laws, I think the Legislature has some work to do once the MNsure mess is cleaned up. Perhaps completely decriminalizing marijuana would help. I wonder if there are statistics on how particular crimes end up being represented by the public defender office.
