After the efforts of Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter's administration to create an Office of Conflict of Counsel faltered, one of the main opponents of that plan has secured Department of Justice funding for a study on the quality of Philadelphia's indigent defense. I'm cross-posting the piece I wrote for Philly City Paper:
One of the main opponents of a plan to create a new Office of Conflict Counsel has secured Department of Justice funding to study the quality of defense that is available to Philadelphia's indigents.
Councilman Dennis O'Brien says the DOJ's Bureau of Justice Assistance has awarded $25,000 for the Sixth Amendment Center's David Carroll to conduct interviews with judges, defense lawyers, prosecutors and others involved in the criminal-justice system. Carroll will make recommendations this fall on how Philadelphia can better meet the American Bar Association's 10 Principles of a Public Defense Delivery System. Carroll has done similar work in Delaware, Utah, Tennessee, Mississippi and elsewhere.
Last winter, the Nutter administration had to scuttle its plan to award cases to a new, private law firm when the Defender Association of Philadelphia has a conflict. Currently, those cases go to a long list of lawyers who take such appointments.
Philadelphia attorney Daniel-Paul Alva's bid was the winner to start a new Office of Conflict Counsel in Philadelphia, but the contract process came to a halt over a legal technicality involving the name of the entity.
In an interview during a visit to Philadelphia on Thursday, Carroll said that he testified in City Council about that proposal because the focus was too much on whether a for-profit model was a bad idea and not enough on how to reach the ABA standards.
He said he has seen terrible public defenders and horrible private lawyers paid by the government to represent defendants. But he also has seen terrific public defenders and fantastic private appointed counsel.
A for-profit model is not inherently wrong if it is meeting the standards for ensuring defendants' Constitutional rights to adequate counsel, he says.
Pennsylvania "is the only state that has never contributed even a dime to the Sixth Amendment right of counsel," Carroll said. "It's an issue most urban jurisdictions don't need to deal with."
Most cities are not under the same pressure for cost containment in their criminal courts, he said.
Philadelphia also does not have any system of oversight to ensure defendants are getting good representation from their public defenders or private lawyers appointed by the court, Carroll said.
Matt Braden, O'Brien's chief of staff, said the fact that the funding for the study is independent is important — there can be no question of Carroll's independence and lack of bias.
In requesting the money for a study, O'Brien wrote that there are issues because Pennsylvania requires local governments to bear the entire cost of providing attorneys to poor defendants.
"Though it is not believed to be unconstitutional for a state to delegate such responsibilities to local government, in doing so, a state must guarantee that local governments are not only able to provide such services, but they are, in fact, doing so," O'Brien said.
Alva was proposing to create a for-profit law firm to represent criminal defendants and family-court defendants when the Defender Association of Philadelphia, Community Legal Services or the Support Center for Child Advocates was already representing another person in the case. The new firm was to handle the first appointments in criminal cases and juvenile-delinquent cases in which the Defender Association has a conflict, and to represent the primary caregiver in every dependency case. The firm, which bid $9.5 million, would have taken on all new appointments.
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
