{"id":1216852,"date":"2023-09-18T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-18T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/mississippi-courts-wont-say-how-they-provide-lawyers-for-poor-clients"},"modified":"2023-09-18T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-09-18T09:00:00","slug":"mississippi-courts-wont-say-how-they-provide-lawyers-for-poor-clients","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/09\/18\/mississippi-courts-wont-say-how-they-provide-lawyers-for-poor-clients\/","title":{"rendered":"Mississippi Courts Won\u2019t Say How They Provide Lawyers for Poor Clients"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n by Caleb Bedillion<\/span>, Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal<\/a> <\/p>\n \n\n \n

This article was produced for ProPublica\u2019s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal<\/a> and The Marshall Project<\/a>. Sign up for Dispatches<\/a> to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n\n\n\n \n

In 2017, the Mississippi Supreme Court\u2019s then-Chief Justice William Waller Jr. helped mandate that judges throughout the state explain in writing how they deliver on their duty to provide poor criminal defendants with a lawyer.<\/p>\n\n

He hoped the rule would spur improvements in Mississippi\u2019s patched-together public defense system, regarded by many legal experts as among the worst in the country.<\/p>\n\n

Now, six years after the rule went into effect, only one of the 23 circuit court districts in the state has responded. The 22nd Circuit Court in southwest Mississippi became the first to comply this summer, according to the Supreme Court\u2019s docket<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

The requirement was part of a push to move \u201ctoward a statewide system,\u201d said Waller, who retired a couple of years after it went into effect. He said he\u2019s partly responsible for not enforcing it. \u201cWe should have started going court by court and asking them to show us their plans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Public defense systems across the country are overburdened<\/a> and underfunded<\/a>, but Mississippi stands out. Nationally, it ranks last in how much money it spends per capita on public defense, according to the Sixth Amendment Center, a nonprofit that advocates for a robust defense for the indigent \u2014 those who can\u2019t afford their own lawyer. Mississippi is one of only eight states that rely on local officials to fund and deliver almost all public defense for people facing trial, according to the center.<\/p>\n\n

Mississippi has long failed to monitor or evaluate local courts to see whether they\u2019re delivering that defense, which is guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Without such oversight, no one knows whether all the state\u2019s courts, especially smaller ones in the vast rural stretches of the state, are doing the job that\u2019s required of them.<\/p>\n\n

The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, ProPublica and The Marshall Project have identified courts that aren\u2019t following the state Supreme Court\u2019s rules on public defense, including judges who fail to appoint lawyers as early as required, or who deny counsel to defendants for inappropriate reasons. Even once appointed, some lawyers say they do little for defendants and that local judges know this.<\/p>\n\n

Such problems show why it\u2019s important for courts to explain how they provide public defense, said Andr\u00e9 de Gruy, who runs Mississippi\u2019s Office of State Public Defender and has written a model plan for local courts<\/a> that they could adapt to meet their needs. Without these plans, he said, \u201cwe can\u2019t say whether we are in compliance with the Constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n \n \n \n\n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n Andr\u00e9 de Gruy, head of Mississippi\u2019s Office of State Public Defender, says that unless judges file indigent defense plans with the state, it\u2019s hard to know whether courts are meeting constitutional standards.\n \n (Imani Khayyam for ProPublica)\n \n \n \n\n \n\n \n \n \n\u201cNot Much Lawyering Going On\u201d\n

In the last three decades, there have been repeated efforts to overhaul Mississippi\u2019s public defense system, including four state committees or commissions, two major reports by outside legal experts and numerous pieces of legislation. They\u2019ve been largely unsuccessful.<\/p>\n\n

There\u2019s widespread agreement about the systemic problems: Defendants can sit in jail for months at a time without a lawyer. The way that many lawyers are paid gives them an incentive to cut corners. There are few full-time public defenders in the state.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cThere is not much lawyering going on. I get them through the system and get them out of here,\u201d an unidentified, part-time public defender bluntly told consultants for the Mississippi Bar Association as part of a state government effort to reform the public defense system in the 1990s.<\/p>\n \n \n \n\n \nShortcomings in Mississippi\u2019s Public Defense Persist Over 20 Years\n