Police use AI to prepare reports, may be cannon fodder for defense attorneys

Police reports sit at the heart of the criminal justice process — officers use them to detail an incident and explain why they took the actions they did, and may later use them to prepare if they have to testify in court, Reported CNN. Reports can also inform prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges and the public about the officer’s perspective on what took place. They can influence whether a prosecutor decides to take a case, or whether a judge decides to hold someone without bond, said Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, an American University law professor who studies the intersection of technology and policing.

“Police reports are really an accountability mechanism,” Ferguson said. “It’s a justification for state power, for police power.”

For that reason, proponents of Draft One tout the potential for AI to make reports more accurate and comprehensive, in addition to its time-saving benefits. But skeptics worry that any issues with the technology could have major ramifications for people’s lives. At least one state has already passed a law regulating the use of AI-drafted police reports.

Draft One’s rollout also comes amid broader concerns around AI in law enforcement, after experiments elsewhere with facial recognition technology have led to wrongful arrests.

“I do think it’s a growing movement. Like lots of AI, people are looking at how do we update? How do we improve?” Ferguson said of AI police report technology. “There’s a hype level, too, that people are pushing this because there’s money to be made on the technology.”

An efficiency tool for officers

After an officer records an interaction on their body camera, they can request that Draft One create a report. The tool uses the transcript from the body camera footage to create the draft, which begins to appear within seconds of the request. The officer is then prompted to review the draft and fill in additional details before submitting it as final.

Each draft report contains bracketed fill-in-the-blanks that an officer must either complete or delete before it can be submitted. The blank portions are designed to ensure officers read through the drafts to correct potential errors or add missing information.

“It really does have to be the officer’s own report at the end of the day, and they have to sign off as to what happened,” Axon President Josh Isner told CNN.

Draft One uses a modified version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which Axon further tested and trained to reduce the likelihood of “hallucinations,” factual errors that AI systems can randomly generate. Axon also says it works with a group of third-party academics, restorative justice advocates and community leaders that provide feedback on how to responsibly develop its technology and mitigate potential biases.

The idea for Draft One came from staffing shortages that Axon’s police department clients were facing, Isner said. In a 2024 survey of more than 1,000 US police agencies, the International Association of Chiefs of Police found that agencies were operating at least 10% below their authorized staffing levels on average.

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Massachusetts judge dismisses more than 120 cases due to lack of public defenders

More than 120 cases, including some for assault on family members and police, were dismissed recently in Boston, the latest fallout from a monthslong dispute over pay that has led public defenders to stop taking new clients, reported The Associated Press.

At a mostly empty courtroom, Boston Municipal Court Chief Justice Tracy-Lee Lyons invoked the Lavallee protocol in dismissing case after case. It requires cases be dropped if a defendant hasn’t had an attorney for 45 days and released from custody if they haven’t had one for seven days. Tuesday was the first time it was invoked to drop cases, while suspects in custody have been released in recent weeks.

Most were for minor crimes like shoplifting, drug possession and motor vehicle violations.

But several involved cases of assault on police officers and domestic violence. One suspect allegedly punched his pregnant girlfriend in the stomach and slapped her in the face. Another case involved a woman who was allegedly assaulted by the father of her child, who threatened to kill her and tried to strangle her. A third case involved a suspect who allegedly hit a police officer and threated to shoot him.

The judge, repeatedly invoking the Lavallee protocol, dismissed almost all of the cases after being convinced public defenders had made a good-faith effort to find the defendants an attorney. No defendants were in court to hear their cases being dismissed.

“This case will be dismissed without prejudice,” Lyons said repeatedly, noting that all fines and fees would be waived.

Frustration from prosecutors over dropped cases

Prosecutors unsuccessfully objected to the dismissal of many of the cases, especially the most serious being dismissed.

“The case dismissals today, with many more expected in coming days and weeks, present a clear and continuing threat to public safety,” James Borghesani, a spokesperson for the Suffolk County district attorney’s office, said in a statement. They vowed to re-prosecute all the cases.

“Our prosecutors and victim witness advocates are working extremely hard to keep victims and other impacted persons updated on what’s happening with their cases,” he continued. “These are difficult conversations. We remain hopeful that a structural solution will be found to address the causal issues here and prevent any repeat.”

Democratic Gov. Maura Healey, speaking to reporters in Fall River, said the situation needed to be resolved.

“This is a public safety issue and also a due process issue as people need representation,” she said. “I know the parties are talking. They have got to find a way to work this out. We need lawyers in court ... and certainly they need to be paid fairly.”

Dispute revolves around pay

Public defenders, who argue they are the lowest paid in New England, launched a work stoppage at the end of May in hopes of pressuring the legislature to increase their hourly pay. The state agency representing public defenders had proposed a pay increase from $65 an hour to $73 an hour over the next two fiscal years for lawyers in district court, an increase from $85 an hour to $105 an hour for lawyers in Superior Court and $120 an hour to $150 an hour for lawyers handling murder cases.

But the 2026 fiscal year budget of $60.9 billion signed early this month by Healey didn’t include any increase.

“The dismissal of cases today under the Lavallee protocols is what needs to be done for those individuals charged with crimes but with no lawyer to vindicate their constitution rights,” said Shira Diner, a lecturer at the Boston University School of Law and the immediate past president of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “It is, however, not a solution to the deep crisis of inadequate pay for bar advocates. Until there are enough qualified lawyers in courts to fulfill the constitutional obligation of the right to counsel this crisis will only intensify.”

The pay of public defenders is a national issue

Massachusetts is the latest state struggling to adequately fund its public defender system.

In New York City, legal aid attorneys are demanding better pay and working conditions. Earlier this month, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed a two-year state budget into law that increases the pay of public defenders and district attorneys in each of the next two years. That comes after the Legislature in 2023 also increased the pay to address rising caseloads, high turnover and low salaries.

Public defenders in Minnesota averted a walkout in 2022 that threatened to bring the court system to a standstill. A year later, the legislature came up with more funding for the state Board of Public Defense so it could meet what the American Bar Association recommends for manageable caseload standards.

Oregon, meanwhile, has struggled for years with a critical shortage of court-provided attorneys for low-income defendants. As of Tuesday, nearly 3,500 defendants did not have a public defender, a dashboard from the Oregon Judicial Department showed. Of those, about 143 people were in custody, some for longer than seven days.

Amid the state’s public defense crisis, lawmakers last month approved over $2 million for defense attorneys to take more caseloads in the counties most affected by the shortage and over $3 million for Oregon law schools to train and supervise law students to take on misdemeanor cases.

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CREATORS: Overburdened Public Defense Puts Justice at Risk

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
July 22, 2025

Lawyers are personally responsible for the quality of representation they provide. Public defenders — those who provide criminal defense to indigent defendants — are, like their colleagues in private practice, bound by ethical responsibilities to limit their workloads to ensure competent representation.

More than six decades ago, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Gideon v. Wainwright. In Gideon, a landmark decision, it was unanimously ruled that state courts are required to provide legal counsel for those defendants accused of a crime who cannot afford a lawyer.

The spirit of Wainright not only requires that an attorney be present, but that the attorney be competent. With that in mind, public defenders with excessive caseloads cannot give appropriate time and attention to each client. According to a 2023 report by RAND, "Overburdened attorneys are forced to choose cases or activities to focus on, such that many cases are resolved without appropriate diligence."

The Wainwright decision is recognized as one of the most important of the 20th century. Now, more than 60 years later, is the decision falling short of its original edict?

In January, a Maine Court ruled that the state is violating the Sixth Amendment rights of hundreds of people by failing to provide attorneys to people charged with a crime. According to the ACLU of Maine, the court wrote the "Sixth Amendment demands continuous representation in Maine from the time the right attaches, and at all stages of the criminal process."

Private attorneys representing indigent defendants in federal courts across the country are either working for free or have stopped taking cases because the federal program that pays has run out of money, reported Source NM. The funding for independent indigent defense stopped at the beginning of July, after Congress froze all judicial branch funding at last year's levels as part of its continuing budget resolution.

The Sixth Amendment provides, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to have the assistance of counsel for his defense."

In 1932, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Powell v. Alabama. It was ruled that the U.S. Constitution requires defendants in capital cases to be given access to counsel upon request.

Ten years later in Betts v. Brady, the court refused to extend the right to counsel to criminal charges other than capital murder. In Betts, it was held that a refusal to appoint counsel for an indigent defendant charged with a felony did not violate the U.S. Constitution.

Then came Clarence Earl Gideon, a 51-year-old drifter and petty thief. He was charged with breaking and entering in Florida. The charge was a felony, and when Gideon first appeared before the court without funds or counsel, he asked the court to appoint him a lawyer.

The judge apologized to Gideon and said that Florida law only provides counsel in capital cases. Gideon replied, "The United States Supreme Court says I am entitled to be represented by counsel."

Gideon represented himself, was convicted and appealed. His appeal was denied, and his case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court appointed a very capable attorney, Abe Fortas, to represent Gideon. Fortas would one day take a seat on the Supreme Court.

In his successful argument before the high Court in 1963, Fortas adroitly pointed out that 37 states already provided for the appointment of counsel by statute, administrative rule or court decision. Eight states provided counsel as a matter of practice. Only five states — Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina — did not provide counsel for indigent defendants.

Unfortunately, today, there remains a clear distinction between the defense of poor litigants and litigants with resources. The quality of legal counsel is not the problem. But the challenge is enormous — an unyielding workload, stagnation or loss of funding and the disparity in access to investigators, experts and other litigation-related resources.

The convergence of those factors makes competent legal representation beyond the reach of many men and women accused of a crime.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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Kohberger's zealous defense fizzles agrees to plea deal

Bryan Kohberger, the man charged in the brutal stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students, has reached a plea deal to avoid the death penalty, according to a letter that prosecutors sent to relatives of the victims, reported The New York Times.

Mr. Kohberger had been set to go on trial on murder charges in August, nearly three years after the killings, which occurred at a residence near the university in Moscow, Idaho. A plea hearing is set for Wednesday.

In a letter to the victims’ families on Monday, prosecutors said that Mr. Kohberger’s defense team asked for a plea offer last week. Under the proposed agreement, which must be approved by the judge in the case, Mr. Kohberger would plead guilty to all charges, face four consecutive life sentences and waive all rights to appeal.

The family of Kaylee Goncalves, one of the victims, criticized the prosecution team for failing to consult with the families. Some of them had worked to change Idaho law to allow the firing squad as a form of capital punishment.

“After more than two years, this is how it concludes, with a secretive deal and a hurried effort to close the case without any input from the victims’ families on the plea’s details,” the Goncalves family said in a statement.

In their letter to the families, prosecutors wrote that the plea deal was “our sincere attempt to seek justice.”

“This agreement ensures that the defendant will be convicted, will spend the rest of his life in prison, and will not be able to put you and other families through the uncertainty of decades of post-conviction appeals,” they wrote. “Your viewpoints weighed heavily in our decision-making process, and we hope that you may come to appreciate why we believe this resolution is in the best interests of justice.”

Prosecutors did not respond to messages seeking comment, nor did lawyers for Mr. Kohberger. The families of the other victims did not comment immediately on the proposed agreement.

Mr. Kohberger, now 30, was a criminology Ph.D. student at Washington State University, about a 20-minute drive from the crime scene. He grew up in Pennsylvania and studied psychology in college. He was arrested in December 2022 at his parents’ home in the Pocono Mountains area of Pennsylvania about six weeks after the killings.

Mr. Kohberger’s defense team tried unsuccessfully for months to undermine key pieces of evidence that investigators collected against him. Prosecutors have said that his DNA was found on a knife sheath recovered at the crime scene, and that records showed he had purchased a knife of a kind matching the sheath in the months before the killings. Video footage showed a car similar to his circling the neighborhood around the time of the deaths.

But investigators have yet to suggest a motive or offer any details on how the victims were chosen.

Mr. Kohberger’s lawyers filed a flurry of motions in recent months, including one trying to bar prosecutors from seeking the death penalty — in part, they said, because Mr. Kohberger had been diagnosed with autism. They unsuccessfully sought a delay in the trial, arguing that their team had not had enough time to comb through the vast amount of evidence in the case. But the judge ordered jury selection to commence on Aug. 4.

Just hours before news of the plea deal on Monday, one of Mr. Kohberger’s lawyers was in court in Pennsylvania, where she successfully argued that two witnesses who knew Mr. Kohberger as a teenager should be forced to testify at trial even though they did not want to.

Mr. Kohberger has been in jail since his arrest. His lawyers have given few hints about what defense they planned to offer, but have said that he was “out driving” on the night of the murders.

In the years before the killings, Mr. Kohberger indicated that he was interested in studying criminals. In a message to a friend in 2018, he wrote that he would like a job “dealing with high-profile offenders.” A few months before the murders, he posted on Reddit asking people who had spent time in prison to describe their “thoughts, emotions and actions from the beginning to end of the crime commission process.”

Investigators have said that the murders happened sometime around 4 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2022. The victims — Ms. Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20 — had spent a typical Saturday night out near the university campus and returned to the house in the early hours of Sunday.

A roommate who survived the attack said she had heard what sounded like crying coming from the room of one of the women. She later told the police that she had opened her door and seen a man with bushy eyebrows in black clothes and a mask. The man left the house and the roommate began texting with another surviving roommate downstairs before taking refuge in her room.

But neither she nor anyone else called the police until more than seven hours later, when a friend came to the house and discovered the body of one of the victims.

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Letter: Incredibly, acting US Attorney served as prosecutor and defense attorney in the same case

Five former prosecutors who worked on criminal cases stemming from the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol are urging the disciplinary office governing lawyers in Washington, DC, to open an investigation into Ed Martin the President’s controversial pick to be US attorney for Washington, DC, reported CNN.

Martin, who has been serving in the post on an interim basis since Trump returned to the White House, is a divisive pick for the job. 

The letter details Martin’s representation of defendants who were prosecuted by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department for their involvement in the Capitol attack. In one case, the letter says, Martin was still repping the individual even after being tapped to serve as interim US attorney. He didn’t withdraw his representation of the man until after the case was dismissed by a federal judge in DC.

“By acting simultaneously as a prosecutor and defense attorney in the same case, Mr. Martin violated Rule 1.7(a), which directs that ‘A lawyer shall not advance two or more adverse positions in the same matter,’” the letter reads.

“Collectively, Mr. Martin’s actions threaten to undermine the integrity of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the legal profession in the District of Columbia,” the group told the disciplinary board. “The reputation of our community depends on a prompt and thorough investigation into Mr. Martin’s violations of his professional obligations.”

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Lawyers need to join the fight!

The Trump administration is openly targeting Biglaw firms for their representation of clients and causes adverse to the president’s political agenda. Five top firms — Covington & Burling, Perkins Coie, Paul Weiss, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale — have found themselves on the receiving end of Trump’s retaliatory executive orders, reported Above the Law. On top of these (likely unconstitutional) executive actions, Trump has sicced the EEOC on 20 Biglaw firms over their DEI policies, with the agency launching full-scale investigations into their alleged “unlawful” employment practices.

Outside support for these law firms has come from more than 50 bar associations, nearly 80 law school deans, and now more than 3,000 lawyers and legal organizations from both sides of the political spectrum have sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, pleading with America’s top government lawyer to step in and defend the rule of law by opposing not just attacks on these law firms, but on judges as well.

The letter, which was put together by the Society for the Rule of Law Institute and Democracy Forward, urges Bondi to live up to what she promised to do during her confirmation hearings and refuse to back “partisan weaponization” of the Justice Department. Here’s an excerpt from the letter:

It is your responsibility, as the lawyer ultimately entrusted with the representation of the United States in legal matters, to oppose attacks on the legal profession, on judges, and on the rule of law and to ensure that the Department of Justice uses its full power to protect the legal profession and equal justice under law for all people. …

It is incumbent on you to use all of the tools available to you to preserve and protect the independence and integrity of the legal profession, including opposing the use of the federal government to attack lawyers, law firms, and legal organizations for engaging in good faith representation of their clients.

Reuters has additional details on some of the lawyers who signed the letter:

Republican signatories included J. Michael Luttig, a former U.S. appeals court judge; former U.S. Representative Barbara Comstock, a senior advisor at Baker Donelson; Peter Keisler, a former acting U.S. attorney general under President George W. Bush; and Donald Ayer, a former top Justice Department lawyer under President George H.W. Bush.

Democrats who signed the letter included Marc Elias, a longtime lawyer for Democratic politicians whom Trump has criticized, and Norm Eisen, whose group the State Democracy Defenders Action is suing the Trump administration in several cases.

If you agree that Attorney General Pam Bondi should do her job properly by standing up for the legal profession and the rule of law, please click here to add your name to the list of signatories.

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The dysfunctional Maverick County, TX court system, a failure of American justice

 Read about the dysfunctional Maverick County court system, where basic tenets of American justice often do not apply, according to the Texas Tribune and The New York Times.

Officials here openly acknowledge that poor defendants accused of minor crimes are rarely provided lawyers. And people regularly spend months behind bars without charges filed against them, much longer than state law allows. Last year alone, at least a dozen people were held too long uncharged after arrests for minor nonviolent crimes, interviews and records reviewed by The New York Times show.

Some defendants seem to have been forgotten in jail. Two men were released after The Times asked about them, half a year after their sentences had been completed.

“The county is not at the level that it should have been for years,” conceded Maverick County Judge Ramsey English Cantú, who oversees misdemeanor court. He said he had been trying to “revamp” and “rebuild” the local justice system since he was elected in 2022.

“It’s been a challenge for me,” he added. “But at the end of the day it is unjust.”

Under the U.S. Constitution, people facing jail time are entitled to a lawyer — paid for by the government if they cannot afford their own — and a fair and efficient court process. But these protections are tenuous, especially in rural parts of America, studies have shown. In Texas, one of the states that spend the least on indigent defense, The Times found recent examples of people held beyond deadlines without charges or lawyers in six rural counties.

Maverick County stood out. It is in one of the state’s poorest regions, and many defendants cannot afford a lawyer; some spend months in jail because they cannot pay a bail bondsman $500 or less. Yet over the past two decades, state auditors have repeatedly noted the county was failing to adequately provide indigent counsel. In 2023, when more than 240 misdemeanor defendants requested representation, the county judge appointed lawyers in only a handful of cases, records show. Nonetheless, the state has imposed no consequences.

With no one to guide them, defendants enter a disjointed justice system where it can be perplexingly difficult to figure out why someone is in jail, if there even is a reason. Misdemeanor court files are almost always missing key documents. Felony court files are often not available until more than a year after a defendant’s arrest. The jail sometimes reported having no record of people despite recently holding them for months.

Defense lawyers and constitutional law scholars, responding to The Times’s reporting, called the county’s practices “atrocious,” “Kafkaesque” and “not a criminal system at all.”

“The lack of transparency and the lack of public defenders in this jurisdiction has allowed this completely inept system to persist,” said Rachel Kincaid, an associate law professor at Baylor University in Waco and former federal prosecutor. “There’s no pressure on them to do anything differently.”

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CREATORS: A New Twist on the "Reviled" Advocate

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
March 18, 2025

American criminal jurisprudence has been turned on its head. For centuries lawyers have been attacked for advocacy on behalf of despicable criminals. Last week, the tables turned. President Donald Trump attacked prosecutors and government lawyers for advocacy on behalf of the people.

The American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients was established more than 250 years ago with John Adams' representation of the British soldiers charged with murder during the Boston Massacre. Adams' trial summation set the standard for law and order.

Adams, who would later serve two terms as president of the United States, said of justice, "On the one hand it is inexorable to the cries and lamentations of the prisoners; on the other it is deaf, deaf as an adder to the clamours of the populace."

Today, more than ever, the clamor of the populace — through news media and social media — can almost instantly accuse, try and convict a person in the court of public opinion. Lawyers are often intentionally, or unintentionally, drug into the glare of the media and no longer perceived as only representing the accused, but of siding with the reprehensible conduct. A lawyer faced with the decision to take on a controversial client must legitimately ask herself, "Will I ever get any more law business in my community if I take this case?"

Attorneys are advocates for others. Many understand that representing the person or issue does not equate to accepting or endorsing what a particular client does. In practice, however, many people have difficulty accepting that a pedophile, terrorist, mass killer or racist hate group is entitled to legal representation.

At times, attorneys are demonized for representing defendants charged with heinous crimes — as if there was something immoral about providing a defense to someone charged with a crime. Such conduct undermines the fundamental protections of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, "to have the assistance of counsel."

There have also been times when lawyers have failed to meet the lofty standards of protecting the United States Constitution. Denise Lieberman, writing for "Liberties," the newsletter of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri, pointed out that during the McCarthy era the American Bar Association "declared that any attorney representing a person associated with the Communist Party was unworthy of membership in the bar, and even demanded that lawyers take loyalty oaths."

However, few were prepared for what we saw last week. President Trump focused his wrath, not on defense attorneys who represent unpopular clients, or legal organizations that capitulate to the rhetoric of demagogues — no, Trump vilified prosecutors.

President Trump made a speech at the Great Hall of the Department of Justice, where, according to The New York Times, he lashed out at lawyers and former prosecutors by name. He also accused the department's previous leadership of trying to destroy him. He labeled those who opposed him as "scum," "corrupt" and "deranged."

"Unfortunately, in recent years, a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government obliterated the trust and good will built up over generations," Trump said, in speaking — of the Justice Department — to an audience at the Justice Department. "They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people."

Trump called himself the chief law enforcement officer in the country — of course, he is not. However, it was less than reassuring when the country's actual chief law enforcement officer — Attorney General Pam Bondi, said, according to Politico, "We will never stop fighting for (Trump) and for our country."

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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Kansas public defenders: Huge caseloads, lower pay and now less funding

Public defenders in Kansas face borderline unethical caseloads, lower pay rates than peers and now the possibility of even less funding to address attorney shortages, reported News from the States.

Heather Cessna, executive director of the Kansas Board of Indigents’ Defense Services, or BIDS, painted a picture for the Senate Judiciary Committee at its first meeting Tuesday of a state struggling to keep up with high case volumes, an aging workforce and economic pressures. 

BIDS requested an additional $10 million from the Legislature this year to adequately compensate public defenders to avoid turnover and hire more lawyers to allow for ethical caseloads. 

Instead, the special legislative budget committee wants to cut $7 million from the BIDS budget, according to House Bill 2007, which was introduced Monday and sponsored by committee chairman Rep. Troy Waymaster, R-Bunker Hill. 

Ultimately, Kansas does not have enough “experienced, qualified and available” attorneys willing to take on BIDS cases, Cessna told lawmakers. About 84% of adult criminal cases in Kansas are BIDS cases.

Clients and lawyers alike are frustrated, Cessna said, “and I field those phone calls daily.”

In Sedgwick County, home to Wichita, attorneys from outside the county are called to travel in to represent indigent defendants. In Shawnee County, where BIDS has two offices, attorneys spent 2024 refusing to take on more cases to maintain professional and ethical caseload levels. In Johnson County, public defenders are inundated with cases, even with a fully staffed public defender’s office and a back-up cache of private attorneys, Cessna said.

“In counties with fewer attorneys, that only gets worse,” she said.

A judge appoints a public defender to a criminal case when a defendant cannot afford representation. It’s a right embedded in the U.S. Constitution, and when that right is in jeopardy due to attorney shortages, like those in Kansas and jurisdictions across the country, the consequences are serious, Cessna said.

Without an attorney, cases are delayed. Evidence can be lost.

“If you have a constitutional requirement to have an attorney representing these people, and you don’t have an attorney standing in that courtroom next to that person, then that case has to get dismissed,” Cessna said.

More than half of Kansas counties have 10 or fewer lawyers and even fewer who specialize in criminal defense. One-third of lawyers in Kansas are over the older than 60, signaling a swath of soon-to-be retirees. 

Freshman Republican Sen. TJ Rose, an insurance agent from Olathe, wondered if compensating private attorneys who take on public defense cases at a rate of $250 an hour instead of $120 an hour would alleviate the shortage. 

Steve Leben, a retired Kansas Court of Appeals judge and a University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law professor, wrote Monday on social media platform X that higher compensation rates for private attorneys could “lessen or eliminate” the shortage.

“But the most effective solution economically and for professional representation is properly funding public defenders,” he said.

Cessna said private attorneys are also subject to the same ethical caseload standards as public defenders, and there isn’t the same oversight and quality control capabilities as with direct employees.

Kansas remains in a better position than some other states, which have seen courts forced to dismiss criminal cases due to a lack of attorneys and, therefore, an inability to fulfill constitutional obligations. 

Still, challenges persist.

“There is no question” cutting BIDS’ funding will escalate a situation that has already reached a crisis point, Cessna told Kansas Reflector.

“I think we’re going to have difficulty paying bills,” she said.

Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Luckert told reporters Wednesday that the proposed $7 million budget cut would be “amazingly significant.”

“The result of that is that it slows processing cases,” Luckert said. “Basically, what we have to do is wait. There are caps on the number of cases that an attorney can take to be able to be effective in those cases. If they’ve reached those caps, the court just has to wait until the attorneys are able to help with that.

“And that means, oftentimes, people sitting in jail for undue amounts of time.”

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Anchorage, Alaska does not have enough lawyers to take criminal cases to trial

Defendants in at least 930 Anchorage misdemeanor cases have walked free for this reason since May 1, the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica found. These include people accused of crimes ranging from violating a restraining order to driving drunk with children in the backseat.

A grand total of three defendants have gone to trial since May, according to the city.

The cascade of failed prosecutions is especially disturbing in a state with the nation’s highest rate of women killed by men. More than 250 of the cases dismissed since May included charges of domestic violence assault, such as men allegedly punching, kicking or threatening to kill their wives or girlfriends. They include charges dropped against a state official accused of elbowing his then-girlfriend in the nose.

Two factors are at work in the mass dismissals. First, Alaska’s overloaded court system has limped along for years by allowing extensive trial delays, defying a state requirement for speedy trials. Second, the Anchorage prosecutor’s office, as in many American cities and states, is struggling to hold onto lawyers.

When a judge this year tried to clear out a backlog of Anchorage misdemeanors by having them brought forward as a group to regularly check which ones were ready for trial, defense attorneys pounced. They began demanding speedy-trial rights for their clients. The city couldn’t keep up. Cases started dying.

City officials say they’re aware of the problem. They have raised prosecutor pay and are hiring attorneys to take more cases to trial, in hopes the prosecutor’s office will be “fully back in action” in three to four months, according to Municipal Attorney Eva Gardner.

Mayor Suzanne LaFrance, who took office July 1, said her transition team knew the lack of prosecutors was a problem, but she was surprised by the number of dropped cases.

“Right now, the prosecutors are frustrated, the police are frustrated. The public is frustrated. Victims are frustrated,” she said in an interview. “We see that. I see that, and this is something that we are working to fix.”

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Creators: Trial by Jury Is Vital to American Democracy

Matthew T. Mangino
Creators Syndicate
August 20, 2024

In colonial America, the British deprived colonists the right to jury trials. This prohibition was cited as one of the causes of the American Revolution. In 1776, the Declaration of Independence, the document that delineated the Founders' grievances with Britain, included, "Depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury." With that document, America's Founding Fathers made trial by jury a right for which they pledged "[their] lives, fortunes, and sacred honor."

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote, "I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor, ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."

Jury trials represent an important and expanding symbol of American democracy. With the advent of questioning the outcome of elections, the idea of one person, one vote is demonstrated by the jury trial.

The jury system, both civil and criminal, is vital to the American way of life. The United States Constitution provides through the Sixth Amendment, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to ... trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed."

Unfortunately, from that simple sentence, jury trials have become extremely complex and exceedingly rare. In the criminal realm, state jury trials occur in less than 5% of cases, and in federal court, there are even fewer trials.

On the civil side, trials have become so costly and unwieldy that cases are often settled, not on the merits but instead on the cost of seeing the case through to a verdict.

Although juries and jurors are sacrosanct to the justice system, a significant majority of people would rather expend time and effort at evading service than just doing their civil duty and serving — in much the same way that a significant number of people don't bother to vote.

There are hardships with serving as a juror. Getting away from work, following behind in class or scrambling for child care are just a few of the barriers to jury duty. However, the absence of working people, young people or child-rearing parents skews the jury pool. The idea of a jury of one's peers does mean a pool of jurors who don't work or can't work, are retired or disabled, or are older jurors with adult children or no children.

A robust and thriving justice system conducts trials. Forcing the government to prove an accused guilty beyond a reasonable doubt is vital to a democracy. Yet in the U.S., few people are proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In a typical criminal prosecution, the first stage is a probable cause hearing. The burden of proof at that stage: "Is it more likely than not that a crime has been committed and the accused may have committed the crime?"

That is not a very demanding burden, and yet if the defendant pleads guilty, that is the only burden the government must meet. Although we speak in glowing terms of the state having to prove someone guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, very few prosecutions are ever tested at that threshold.

Jurors can also be an important check on overreaching by the government and prosecutors. Jury nullification has long been a means to protect defendants from unjust laws. Juries have the power to nullify the law in individual cases by finding a defendant not guilty even when there is enough evidence to prove the crime beyond a reasonable doubt.

During prohibition, it was alcohol laws. In the late 1990s, it was Dr. Jack Kevorkian and assisted suicide. Today, it is marijuana.

In this era of bashing long-standing institutions — elections, the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress — we would do well to double down on support for our system of trial by jury.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino).

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Faith in criminal justice system below 20 percent

Americans’ faith in major societal institutions hasn’t improved over the past year following a slump in public confidence in 2022, reported Gallup.

The five worst-rated institutions -- newspapers, the criminal justice system, television news, big business and Congress -- stir confidence in less than 20% of Americans, with Congress, at 8%, the only one in single digits.

Last year, Gallup recorded significant declines in public confidence in 11 of the 16 institutions it tracks annually, with the presidency and Supreme Court suffering the most. The share of Americans expressing a great deal or fair amount of confidence in these fell 15 and 11 percentage points, respectively.

Neither score recovered appreciably in the latest poll, with confidence in the court now at 27% and the presidency at 26%. However, the survey was conducted June 1-22, 2023, before the Supreme Court issued decisions affecting affirmative action in education, college loan forgiveness and LGBTQ+ Americans’ access to creative services. Any or all of these decisions could have altered the court’s image as well as that of President Joe Biden, who spoke out against the rulings.

Public confidence in each of the other 14 institutions remains near last year’s relatively low level, with none of the scores worsening or improving meaningfully.

Overall, the new poll finds small business enjoying the most public trust, with 65% of Americans having a great deal or fair amount of confidence in it. A majority, 60%, also have high confidence in the military, while less than half (43%) feel this way about the next highest-rated institution, the police.

The medical system and the church or organized religion round out the top five annually rated institutions, albeit with meager 34% and 32% confidence ratings, respectively. Another six -- the U.S. Supreme Court, banks, public schools, the presidency, large technology companies and organized labor -- earn between 25% and 27% confidence.

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What might a jury look like for Trump's up coming New York criminal trial

 On April 15, several hundred New Yorkers will file into a Manhattan courtroom to be scrutinized by prosecutors and defense attorneys, probed and prodded for signs that they could sway — or stymie — the first criminal trial of a former American president.

Lawyers representing the State of New York and Donald J. Trump will help select the 12 people who will decide the former president’s fate, according to The New York Times.

The lawyers will try to divine unspoken political biases, opinions about law enforcement and other hidden agendas. The potential jurors, who could face public anger and threats if they are chosen, will be asked about their education, occupations, families and news sources.

The questions will drill slowly deeper: Potential jurors, all from one of the state’s most liberal counties, will be asked to reveal whether they volunteered for or against Mr. Trump. Perhaps most critically, they will be asked whether their feelings would interfere with their ability to be fair.

Seating the members of the jury and several alternates could take two weeks or more, and the choices may be as pivotal as any evidence presented in court.

“It’s the most important part,” said Arthur Aidala, a defense attorney whose firm has had many high-profile clients, including Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer. “And the hardest part too.”

Mr. Trump faces several trials, but other cases are mired in delays. The 12 jurors in Manhattan who will decide whether he falsified business records to hide an affair with a porn star will bear unblinking scrutiny.

For conservatives, the trial is a chance to expose what they see as an abuse of prosecutorial power and a plot led by Democrats to derail Mr. Trump. For liberals, it could be the only test of the judicial system’s power over the former president before the election this fall.

The stakes of jury selection are particularly high for Mr. Trump’s team, which is aware of the former president’s poor standing among many in New York County — Manhattan, as most people know it — which overwhelmingly voted for President Biden in 2020.

Mr. Trump’s legal team sees the case as winnable, although some believe a full acquittal is less likely than the prospect of finding jurors willing to cause a mistrial by holding out against a unanimous guilty verdict, according to two people with direct knowledge of the discussions.

Two lawsuits. E. Jean Carroll, a writer who says Donald Trump raped her in the mid 1990s, filed two separate lawsuits against the former president. Here’s what to know:

Who is E. Jean Carroll and what does she claim? Carroll is a journalist and a onetime advice columnist for Elle magazine. She wrote about the alleged assault in a 2019 memoir, claiming that Trump had attacked her in the dressing room of a department store. The account was the most serious of several sexual misconduct allegations women have made against Trump, all of which he has denied.

How did Trump respond to her claims? After Carroll’s account appeared as an excerpt of her book in New York magazine, Trump emphatically denied her accusations, saying that she was “totally lying,” that the assault had never occurred and that he could not have raped her because she was not his “type.”

On what grounds did Carroll sue Trump for rape? In 2022, New York passed a law giving adult sexual assault victims a one-time opportunity to file civil cases, even if the statute of limitations has long expired. Carroll subsequently filed a lawsuit, accusing Trump of rape and seeking damages. On May 9, a jury found Trump liable for the sexual abuse and defamation of Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages.

Why did she also sue him for defamation? In 2019, Carroll filed a defamation lawsuit against Trump in New York for making disparaging comments and branding her a liar after the publication of her memoir. Carroll  sought additional damages in response to Trump’s insults after she won her rape lawsuit. The trial in that case ended on Jan. 26 with a Manhattan jury ordering Trump to pay $83.3 million to Carroll.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers want a jury that includes younger Black men and white working-class men, particularly public employees like police officers, firefighters and sanitation workers. Those who have had bad experiences with the legal system will also be prized by the defense, which has cast the case as politically motivated.

Polls have shown that voters who haven’t graduated from college tend to favor Republicans. So prosecutors, conversely, will probably be looking for more educated voters from Democratic neighborhoods, fishing for those who consume news from sources like MSNBC, known for its outspoken liberal hosts, and who are fond of late-night comedians like Stephen Colbert, who hosted a presidential panel with Mr. Biden on March 28.

Each potential juror will answer a uniform set of questions, and lawyers can ask follow-ups. Some queries may be designed to uncover biases against — or allegiances to — Mr. Trump, such as whether jurors have any feelings or opinions about how he is being treated in this case, or whether they believe a former president can be criminally charged in state court.

Each side will be able to remove a limited number of jurors without explanation, a so-called peremptory challenge. They can also ask for jurors to be removed “for cause” by providing specific reasons they believe a juror cannot be fair and impartial.

Those disqualifications are critical.

“It’s always most important to know who your worst jurors are going to be,” said Renato Stabile, an attorney who does jury consulting. “It’s jury deselection, not jury selection. Because you can only control who you are getting rid of.”

Unlike most trials, where many potential jurors are loath to serve, some may be actively trying to get seated in this case. Michael Farkas, a defense attorney, said that those who seem to be angling for the jury “are the people who are most likely to have a partisan agenda.”

Some may not be completely forthcoming.

“Getting 12 jurors you think you actually know is difficult enough in a regular case,” said Mr. Farkas. “In a case like this, both parties can pretty much rest assured that they are going to have people on the jury that aren’t being completely honest about how they feel.”

Mr. Aidala was blunter about potential jurors.

“They lie,” he said, adding, “People want to be on that jury because they think they’re going to write a book or they’re going to be on ‘20/20’ or ‘48 Hours’ or one of those things.”

Prosecutors are aware of the perils of trying famous defendants, and Mr. Trump is globally famous.

“People know who he is,” said Joshua Steinglass, a senior trial counsel with Mr. Bragg’s office, at a Feb. 15 hearing on jury selection. “They’re going to have an opinion one way or the other. They can like him or dislike him. They can still be fair jurors so long as that is not going to affect their abilities to fairly judge the evidence.”

In Justice Juan M. Merchan’s decision issued last week expanding a gag order on Mr. Trump, he suggested that the former president’s fame could influence deliberations.

“The conventional ‘David vs. Goliath’ roles are no longer in play as demonstrated by the singular power defendant’s words have on countless others,” the justice wrote.

Justice Merchan could wield significant influence. In courtrooms, jurors often look to judges for guidance. By repeatedly attacking Justice Merchan, Mr. Trump could risk punishment, and jurors could find themselves sympathetic to the judge trying to contain him.

The case itself is relatively straightforward: Mr. Trump faces nearly three dozen felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment made to Stormy Daniels, a porn actress, to buy her silence in the waning days of the 2016 presidential campaign.

At first blush, Mr. Trump’s jury pool appears to be unfriendly: 70 percent of Manhattan’s 1.1 million registered voters are Democrats. Many know the defendant well, since he once called New York his home and made his name in its tabloid newspapers. Juries and judges in Manhattan have already found Mr. Trump liable for committing sexual abuse, defaming his accuser and, most recently, for wildly inflating his net worth to obtain better loan terms.

Valerie Hans, a professor of law at Cornell University who has studied jury behavior, said that pretrial publicity typically favored prosecutors, but that dynamic could be altered by Mr. Trump’s divisive behavior.

“Trump has not ceded the pretrial publicity to the prosecution in this case at all,” said Ms. Hans, noting that Mr. Trump had repeatedly referred to case as a “witch hunt,” a view that his supporters echo.

“It can help shape how people look at the evidence that’s presented at trial from the very start,” she said, adding, “People are more likely to agree with things they have heard many times before.”

Mr. Trump seems well aware of the public relations battle he is waging in his hometown. The presumptive Republican nominee, who faces three other indictments, has repeatedly called for a crackdown on crime. He recently attended the wake of a slain New York City police officer, where he said that the country needed to “get back to law and order.”

He has attacked Justice Merchan again and again and said the justice system is rigged against him.

The judge has moved to defend the citizens who may decide the former president’s fate. New York State does not allow juries to operate in full anonymity, but in early March Justice Merchan ordered prospective jurors’ identities to be shielded from the public, while effectively barring Mr. Trump from exposing them. The former president will not have access even to their addresses.

Lawyers for both sides, however, will know the jurors’ names. They will scour potential jurors’ social media accounts as well as their voter registration and voting histories, which will show whether they voted but not for whom.

Earlier this year, the federal jurors who found Mr. Trump liable for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll and ordered him to pay her $83.3 million were completely anonymous. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan encouraged them to stay that way.

“My advice to you is that you never disclose that you were on this jury,” Judge Kaplan told them at the end of the trial. “And I won’t say anything more about it.”

Jurors in the criminal trial will also be subject to an intense media spotlight, with scores of reporters packing the courtroom and a constant barrage of commentary from social media and traditional news outlets.

And, of course, they will have to reckon with Mr. Trump, who will sit in the court for weeks just feet away from them. In the defamation trial, he was fixated on the jurors from the moment they walked into the courtroom. He pivoted to study them as they answered biographical questions and frequently talked to his lawyers.

But his participation may have been a double-edged sword. For prospective jurors, it provided their first glimpse of Mr. Trump’s pique at being a defendant.

Judge Kaplan read a summary of the case to them, including the established finding that Mr. Trump had sexually assaulted Ms. Carroll. Later, Judge Kaplan asked the prospective jurors whether any believed that the court system was treating the former president unfairly.

Mr. Trump raised his hand.

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In some Mississippi counties criminal defendants are on their own

The right to an attorney is fundamental to the U.S. justice system. Yet, in a small Mississippi court off the interstate between Jackson and Memphis, that right is tenuous, reported ProPublica and The Marshall Project.

The two judges in Yalobusha County Justice Court appointed lawyers for just 20% of the five dozen felony defendants who came before them in 2022, according to a review of court records; nationally, experts estimate that lawyers are appointed to at least 80% of felony defendants at some point in the legal process because they’re deemed poor. In this court, the way these two judges decide who gets a court-appointed attorney appears to violate state rules meant to protect defendants’ rights. A few defendants have even been forced to represent themselves in key hearings.

This article was produced in partnership with the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, formerly a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, and ProPublica.

Despite the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee that everyone gets a lawyer even if they’re too poor to pay for one, most felony defendants in this court went without any representation at all before their cases were forwarded to a grand jury, according to a review of one full year of court files by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, The Marshall Project and ProPublica. (Read more about how we analyzed the court’s appointment rate in our methodology.)

“That is a huge problem,” said André de Gruy, who leads a state office that handles death penalty cases and felony appeals but has no power over local public defense. “I believe almost every one of those people would like a lawyer and is unable to afford one.”

For decades, civil rights advocates and legal reformers have complained that Mississippi is among the worst states in the country in providing attorneys for poor criminal defendants. It’s one of a handful of states where public defense is managed and funded almost entirely by local governments, and the way they do so varies greatly from county to county. Defendants in some places see appointed lawyers quickly and remain represented thereafter; elsewhere, sometimes right over the county line, defendants can wait months just to see a lawyer or can go long periods without having one at all.

The Mississippi Supreme Court, which oversees how state courts operate, has issued several rules in recent years that were intended to drive improvements. But it is up to locally elected judges to carry out those mandates, and there’s no oversight to make sure they’re doing it right.

Much like Mississippi, Texas places primary responsibility for public defense on counties. A state commission in Texas investigates the counties with low appointment rates; a felony appointment rate below 50% would raise serious questions about a county’s compliance with state law, according to current and former officials there. In Mississippi, state officials don’t even know how often judges appoint attorneys.

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PLW: Pennsylvania Approves Funding for Indigent Criminal Defense

Matthew T. Mangino
The Legal Intelligencer
January 26m 2024

Pennsylvania will soon provide funding for indigent criminal defense. The legislature approved $7.5 million for criminal defense for those who cannot afford an attorney. The historic legislation was signed into law by Gov. Josh Shapiro. What is so historical about funding a constitutional right that was confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1963?

For Pennsylvania, it is an opportunity to move on from the dubious distinction of being one of only two states, South Dakota is the other, providing zero state funding for indigent defense. For Pennsylvania counties the burden of providing counsel to indigent defendants was previously paid for without state assistance.

Article I, Section 9 of the Pennsylvania Constitution provides: “In all criminal prosecutions the accused hath a right to be heard by himself and his counsel.“

According to the Pennsylvania indigent criminal defense services funding and caseloads report of the state legislative and budget committee, Pennsylvania Supreme Court decisions confirm that the Pennsylvania Constitution aligns with the U.S. Constitution in terms of an indigent criminal defendants’ right to counsel at trial.

In 1968 the Public Defender Act was adopted providing that each county is required to appoint a public defender through local government action. The county was also responsible, exclusively, for funding the office.

The Public Defender Act was the result of a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision that extended the Sixth Amendment—by way of the 14th Amendment—to indigent criminal defendants facing felony charges in state court. The high court later expanded the protection to misdemeanor charges.

The dire state of indigent defense in Pennsylvania has been front and center for decades. A dozen years ago, in a column for The Legal Intelligencer, I described concerns raised more than 40 years ago. The Pomeroy Report issued in 1982, chaired by Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Thomas W. Pomeroy and the 1998 report of the governor’s judicial reform commission, chaired by Superior Court Judge Phyllis W. Beck, both advocated for the state to finance indigent defense costs.

In 2003, The Pennsylvania Supreme Court report on racial and gender bias in the justice system recommended “that Pennsylvania institute statewide funding, and oversight, of the indigent defense system by establishing an independent indigent defense commission and appropriating state funds for the support of indigent defense.”

The report found that “Pennsylvania is generally not fulfilling its obligation to provide adequate, independent defense counsel to indigent persons.”

In 2011, the joint state government task force on services to indigent criminal defendants found, “There is no direct state funding, nor is there a statewide administrative structure for ensuring uniform quality of representation or reasonably consistent eligibility standards.”

How did we get here?

The Sixth Amendment provides, “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right … to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”

In 1932, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932), nine Black youths—the “Scottsboro Nine”—were accused of raping two white women in Alabama. County officials moved quickly. A total of three trials took one day and all nine were sentenced to death. Alabama law required the appointment of counsel in capital cases, but counsel was little more than a “warm body” sitting next to the defendants at trial.

The high court ruled that the U.S. Constitution requires defendants in capital cases, those facing the death penalty, be given access to counsel.

Ten years later in Betts v. Brady, 316 U.S. 455 (1942), the court refused to extend the right to counsel to criminal charges other that capital murder. Betts was indicted for robbery in Maryland. He was unable to afford counsel and requested one be appointed for him. His request was denied. He was convicted and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The high court held that a refusal to appoint counsel for an indigent defendant charged with a felony did not violate the U.S. Constitution.

In the early 1960s Clarence Earl Gideon was a 51-year-old drifter and petty-thief. He was charged with breaking and entering in Florida. The charge was a felony and Gideon asked the court to appoint him a lawyer.

Gideon was denied a lawyer. He was convicted and his state appeal denied. He ultimately made his way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Gideon was appointed an attorney for his appeal. His attorney argued that the federal government already recognized that the Sixth Amendment required the appointment of counsel for indigent defendants facing felony charges. He also pointed out that 37 states provided for the appointment of counsel by statute, administrative rule or court decision. Eight states provided counsel as a matter of practice. In an unprecedented act of support for the rights of those accused of a crime, 22 state attorneys general joined Gideon in urging the court to establish an absolute constitutional right to counsel in criminal cases. See Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963).

Justice Hugo Black’s brief opinion in Gideon was compelling:

“Reason and reflection require us to recognize that in our adversary system of criminal justice, any person hauled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him. This seems to us to be an obvious truth.”

Last spring, I wrote in the Pennsylvania Capital Star, that over the decades since Gideon “the focus has evolved from merely the right to counsel—to the right to effective representation.  That representation has turned from ensuring a fair trial to ensuring effective assistance on matters such as plea bargaining and the collateral consequences of sentencing.”

The evolution from a “warm body” at counsel table to a competent attorney creates an additional problem in Pennsylvania. Besides not providing statewide funding for indigent defense, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Pennsylvania provides no statewide administration of right to counsel services. The county-based systems remain entirely decentralized with no oversight by state government.

Who will administer the new state funding and establish standards for local public defenders? A county-by-county review by the legislative budget and finance committee of the General Assembly in 2021 found Philadelphia spends the most money on criminal defense per person, around $30.20 in fiscal year 2019, reported The Express. The same year, Mifflin County in rural central Pennsylvania spent $3.20 per person.

The new legislation will establish a committee to decide how to spend the state’s funding for indigent defense. The legislation directs the committee to develop educational training for public defenders and to collect data that will assist in monitoring the quality of public defender services on a county level.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George in New Castle. He is the author of “The Executioner’s Toll,” 2010 and a columnist with Creators. He was the former district attorney of Lawrence County. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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