A Minnesota law states that a person must pay for the service of a public defender.
Is this constitutional? Should people be forced to pay for public services?
As I understood Gideon v. Wainwright, the right to attorney is guaranteed by the 6th Amendment as well as by the 14th Amendment (since due process involves equal treatment of the accused). Further, I’ve never heard of people having to pay for public services even they could afford to do so.
I remember when Minnesota was a progressive state. You’re right. The law is unconstitutional. I am ashamed of my state. Ashamed.
This does sound unconstitutional to me; hopefully someone will raise a fuss, and get a federal court to throw the law out.
What if someone can’t pay the fee? Are they denied a trial?
I don’t see how this can be constitutional, but IANAL.
First of all, it appears Minnesota’s courts are well on the way to bouncing the elimination of discretion on the part of judges in waiving the “cost” of the public defender. Hopefully, this will make it unnecessary for the federal courts to weigh in on the subject. I’d hate to see our current lineup at the SCotUS overturn or “refine” Gideon.
Second of all, this reminds me of the court decision in Nevada recently overturning a state initiative on the basis that the legislature “couldn’t” reach a budget under the constrictions of the initiative’s law. Here, the assertion that the state is “broke” and thus can’t afford to have free public defenders is nonsense: you simply need to charge someone else for the program; presumably by assessing appropriate fees or taxes. One gets tired of hearing of the impossibility of accomplishing something that elected officials are put in office to accomplish, even if it means doing something unpopular.
Strangely, it’s not unconstitutional. I know because I used to be a public defender in NH, and they always required people who used our services to agree with the Office of Cost Containment (spit on them) that they’d make “reasonable efforts to pay”. There was a sliding scale, and some sort of fee schedule. It completely sucks, but the budget for court appointred counsel is not exactly popular, and many legislators want “those scumbags” (not my words) to pay for their lawyers.
In NH, you used to be able to get the lawyer first, then worry about the cost thing afterwards. We never turned anyone away for money, and we would work with OCC (spit) after the representation was over.
That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not unconstitutional - did anyone ever challenge it in court?
Tell me if I’m crazy. From that link, Minn has 500 attorneys each working 915 cases a year, that’s 457,500 total cases per year. Minn has a total population of about 5 million. That means each year, 10% of the population is on trial! And… that’s only the people who don’t pay for their own lawyers!
Does that seem awfully high to you?
CHeese it’s entirely likely that # ‘cases’ does not equal # people.
I see it as no different than assessing court costs, fees, fines etc even when the person is indigent (happens), also assesing jail costs (ie a per diem rate is charged for those who’ve been sentenced to jail).
My state (MI) also charges a ‘supervisory’ fee for folks on probation or parole (roughly 30$ per month).
The defendant gets the attorney, gets the service. Is assessed costs afterward. therefore, they are in fact granted the right to legal counsel for the trial (which wouldn’t happen w/o a court appointement, since most lawyers, IIRC, will not accept a criminal case w/o a retainer or some promise of payment).
Even though the defendant gets the service, and doesn’t have to pay immediately, the mere knowledge that he will have to pay (or be pursued civilly) can be enough to make him consider foregoing representation.
The idea ought to be that indigent defendants don’t have to make those sorts of choices. It’s understood that wealty defendants will most likely receive better representation than poor ones; it’s not at all clear to me that we should be working actively to increase this disparity.
Yes, it’s pretty clear that the real trouble with the law is that there is no discretion on the part of the judge to waive the fees.
Would love to see the courts waive them anyway, on the basis of separation of powers. Then see what happens… hehehe