ROLLA, Mo. (CN) — Missouri’s efforts to reduce the time poor criminal defendants must wait for a public defender are commendable but they don’t make the state’s waiting list constitutional, an ACLU attorney said Wednesday during closing arguments in a two-day bench trial.
“None of that testimony changes the central and undisputed facts in this case, that thousands of indigent defendants across the state of Missouri remain on the waiting list for legal representation, many for months at a time, despite qualifying for MSPD services,” said Jason Williamson, deputy director of the ACLU’s criminal law reform project based in New York. “Those indigent defendants, whether they're in custody, or out of custody, are suffering constitutional harm as a result.”
The ACLU accused the Missouri State Public Defender’s Office and state judges of “systematically placing” indigent defendants on waiting lists for legal representation in a lawsuit filed in Cole County in February.
The trial took place before Judge William Hickle in Phelps County, whom the Missouri Supreme Court assigned to the case, remotely via WebEx. Wednesday was the second day of the bench trial, which was scheduled to last three days but ended a day early.
Williamson continued by saying that five of the named petitioners spent 93, 107, 116, 1147 and 160 days, respectively, on the waiting list before being assigned representation.
He cited numbers from a year ago, when there were 4,690 defendants on the list. Of those, 2,744 had been waiting for at least three months; 2,233 for at least four months; 1,916 for at least five months; 1,546 for at least six months; and 600 for one year.
The attorney said that as of Sunday, there were roughly 2,000 people on the waiting list. Of those, 1,113 had been waiting for at least three months; 922 for at least four months; 734 for at least five months; 665 for at least six months; and 233 for at least one year.
He credited the public defender’s office for cutting the wait list in half over the past year, but still argued that a crisis exists.
“The state may in fact be continuing its investigation and working up its prosecution, while [indigent defendants] don't have the benefit of having their lawyer, to critical pieces of discovery in a timely fashion, including police reports or video evidence that could be essential to the defense,” Williamson said. “So, while the state develops that case, the witnesses’ memories fade and potentially exculpatory evidence disappears, individuals on the waiting list remain defenseless for months at a time.”
Williamson said his clients understand and appreciate the limited resources public defenders have. But he argued courts have other remedies besides waiting lists, such as contracting out defense counsel or dismissing lower lever offenses.
Jason Lewis of the Missouri Attorney General’s Office gave the state’s closing arguments.
“I think what's important to do, your honor, is to also keep in mind what type of a ruling would make this situation possibly worse, and we think that would be a ruling that fails to give credit to the hard work of the public defender system, and judges across the state of Missouri to ensure that counsel is appointed to criminal defendants in a way that reflects the underlying Sixth Amendment right,” Lewis said. “That's exactly what the public defenders have been doing. I think it is exactly what judges on the bench across Missouri have been doing. That's exactly what's a wait list accomplishes, is achieving this difficult balance.”
Lewis touted the fact that the wait list has been cut in half over the previous year. He noted that a year ago there were 900 defendants on the list that were in custody, compared to zero today.
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