My home state of Michigan has been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately, but NPR has a hopeful story about some movement toward fixing the state’s appallingly bad indigent defense system. How bad is it? The public defenders in Detroit handle an average of 2400 cases a year.
In many Michigan counties, judges choose from rosters of defense lawyers who make a flat rate for each case they handle. In others, contracts are awarded to small groups of lawyers who offer the lowest bid.
That’s no kind of justice, says Mike Steinberg of the American Civil Liberties Union. His office in midtown Detroit is filled with photos of the Statue of Liberty.
“For a while I had a special attraction to the Statue of Liberty,” Steinberg says. Steinberg says he still believes in those ideals. So he sued Michigan, arguing the way it provides lawyers for the poor amounts to assembly line justice.
Court-appointed lawyers in Michigan, Steinberg says, “have to encourage their clients to plead guilty and keep the docket moving in order to generate the volume that they can make a living. So the incentive is to get your client to plead guilty as quickly as possible doing the least amount of work as possible.”
Steinberg and the ACLU have an unlikely ally: state Rep. Tom McMillin. The son of a retired General Motors executive, he’s a Republican and a former leader of the Christian Coalition in Michigan.
“Conservatives are really talking about, what is the proper role of government? Has it expanded too much?” McMillin says. “And I think many of us feel this is one of the proper roles — providing as much equal justice as possible.”
That issue captured the attention of Michigan’s Republican Governor, Rick Snyder, too. Last year, the governor named McMillin to a commission to study how to improve the patchwork system of justice for the poor. The group is planning to present its recommendations to the governor this month.
I’ve mentioned McMillin before. On most issues, he’s a solid religious righter — all about God, guns and gays. But on transparency issues and on indigent defense, he’s genuinely on the right side. The real sticking point is going to be financial. At a time of flagging revenue, where’s the money going to come from to fix the problem? I fear it will come from the wrong places.
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Tualha
June 19, 2012 at 11:16 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
They could try decriminalizing minor drug offenses. I suspect that would cut down the caseload a whole lot.
Modusoperandi
June 19, 2012 at 11:29 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
They can pay for it with civil asset forfeitures.
heironymous
June 19, 2012 at 11:31 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Bing Bing Bing
We have a winner
@Tualha
Anneliese
June 19, 2012 at 12:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The previous post suggests a source of revenue.
d cwilson
June 19, 2012 at 12:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Being Michigan, the funding will probably come from the sale of whatever public assets haven’t already been given away to private developers.
Stevarious
June 19, 2012 at 12:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, we’ll make those poor people choose. Do they want food stamps, or legal defense?
beezlebubby
June 19, 2012 at 12:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The discussion about McMillen being on the right side occasionally reminds me of the theme I’ve been pondering for years. Just as most modern American Christians are pretty goddamned lousy Christians, so are American conservatives goddamned lousy conservatives. The bray on and on about smaller government, but they desire and assemble whole police states to fight against consensual activities between consenting adults: drug use, gambling, and prostitution.
ottod
June 19, 2012 at 2:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Jimmy Stewart movies to the contrary, I suspect that over the years most of our lawmakers and government executives were people who held strong, often uncompromising, opinions on the majority of the issues they addressed, but we have been able to make progress (at least until recently) because those same hide-bound, intractable pillars of fiscal conservatism, or civil rights, or whatever, were willing to take a good long look at other issues where their knowledge or opinions weren’t quite as obdurate, and find working compromises. Those precious compromises moved the government, the nation, and society ahead. Sometimes the progress was slow, but the trend was in the right direction. I fear we have come to a period, hopefully a short one, in which progress will be flat or even negative because the new tribalism has made compromise outside the group a perilous activity.
My wish is that reason will inspire a change in this attitude before catastrophe demands it. Legislators like the one in Michigan strike sparks of hope.
Chris from Europe
June 19, 2012 at 6:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Legislators like the one in Michigan strike sparks of hope.”
The one good thing doesn’t erase a lot of bad stuff. And this one isn’t passed and who knows how the concrete proposal will do. And the argument of the guy is nonsense, as he’s clearly implying economical size of government. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if the government expanded in the right areas, like public defenders.