Pennsylvania is the only state in the country that doesn’t allocate general funds for indigent defense
Last November, experts at the Brennan Center, writing in USA Today, observed that “mass incarceration has been a driving force of economic inequality,” that’s only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, reported the Pennsylvania Capital-Star.
“Involvement in the criminal justice system —
specifically time in prison or conviction of a crime — casts a shadow over
someone’s life, limiting their ability to earn a living wage in the short and
long term,” the Brennan Center’s Ames Grawert and Terry-Ann
Craigie wrote. “The effect of prison is especially pronounced:
a 52
percent reduction in annual earnings and little earnings
growth for the rest of their lives, amounting to a loss of $500,000 over
several decades.”
So it was encouraging to hear senior staffers for Gov.
Tom Wolf, say that the administration wants to “build support for indigent
defense” into the spending plan for the fiscal year that starts July 1.
Pennsylvania is the only state in the country that doesn’t
allocate general funds for indigent defense, according to a 2011
study by the Joint State Government Commission. Those costs are
borne entirely by the state’s 67 counties, which each maintain their own public
defender’s office.
The state took a token step toward redressing the balance in
2019, providing
$500,000 in funding to reimburse counties for costs of indigent
criminal defense in capital cases, the Capital-Star’s Elizabeth Hardison reported
at the time.
The money, tucked into a piece of budget-enabling
legislation known as the Fiscal Code, was distributed through a grant
program administered by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and
Delinquency. The grant program didn’t go far enough for criminal justice
reformers, who called it a token amount.
“It’s a small and … an unrealistic appropriation,” Phyllis
Subin, a former public defender who now heads the Pennsylvania Coalition for
Justice in Philadelphia, told Hardison. “This is pretty much
a drop in the bucket of what’s really needed in terms of appropriate and
systemic change.”
Wolf didn’t propose a specific appropriation in his
2021 spending plan, administration spokeswoman Lyndsay Kensinger told
the Capital-Star on Sunday.
“The administration is looking forward to working with the
Legislature to create this program in Pennsylvania,” Kensinger said.
Whatever dollar figure Wolf and lawmakers
eventually negotiate, that money can’t come soon enough, Sean Quinlan, a
criminal defense lawyer in Cumberland County, said. That’s particularly true in
the case of death penalty prosecutions, he added.
“The death penalty is a political tool used by district
attorneys in election years to seek career advancement, not criminal
deterrence,” Quinlan, also a Capital-Star opinion contributor,
said. “If by ‘increased funding for indigent defense’ the governor intends
to plug budget holes in counties out of pocket for defense in capital cases,
he’ll essentially be subsidizing the campaigns of county district attorneys,
not protecting the poor or fixing a a broken system. Enormous capital case
defense expenses are just the symptom. The death penalty is the disease.”
Quinlan is right. While other states are moving toward
abolition (Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, like Wolf, a Democrat, is
expected to sign an abolition bill any day now.), Wolf, who imposed a
moratorium on executions, was notably silent on abolition during his budget
address.
Pennsylvania, which hasn’t executed anyone since 1999,
effectively doesn’t have a death penalty, so one wonders why Wolf didn’t
just shoot the moon and propose eliminating this racist, antiquated and immoral
relic.
Wolf’s spending plan does, however, call for probation
and bail reforms. As we’ve previously noted, state Rep. Summer Lee,
D-Allegheny, has
a bill banning cash bail. Rep. Chris Rabb, D-Philadelphia, meanwhile,
is expected to soon reintroduce the death
penalty abolition bill he pushed in the 2019-2020 legislative session.
In a tidy circle, Prejean lent
her support to that effort as well.
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