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A state commission responsible for ensuring low-income clients have legal representation has presented a new plan to meet this obligation. The Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services, in a plan shared this week, proposed the state spend nearly $9 million to hire an additional six public defender offices, by 2025.
This proposal, which is far from a final solution to the state’s chronic lack of attorneys for low-income Mainers, should be a baseline for discussion in the Legislature next year.
Even if this proposal were fully funded, Maine’s existing – and failing – system would remain in place for many defendants, the Portland Press Herald reported.
That system, we’ve written many times, is broken and needs to be fully replaced by a network of public defenders. Maine is the only state without a full public defender’s office, relying instead on private attorneys to agree to take on cases, often at rates that are much lower than they are paid by other clients.
The roster of attorneys to take these cases, which include criminal defense, child custody and other matters, has shrunk, leaving clients without the representation they need. Some remain in jail awaiting court cases. Some lose custody of or visitation rights with their children.
It is an arrangement that can deprive defendants of their rights to a speedy and fair trial, while also potentially disrupting their lives, jobs and relationships with family members. The system also costs taxpayers increasing sums to keep people in jail for extended periods of time while they await court dates.
And, according to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Maine, the state is failing to meet its constitutional obligation to ensure a right to counsel and a speedy trial.
For these reasons, the slow movement away from the failing system is especially frustrating.
Maine lawmakers have approved funding for five public defenders in Maine, but the new system remains underfunded, incomplete and has already had staff turnover.
This week’s proposal would build on this with two new public defense offices in Aroostook County and the Bangor area in 2024. In 2025, the agency seeks four more offices to cover the rest of the state: a Down East office, a Midcoast office, a southern Maine office for Cumberland and York counties, and another central Maine office to serve Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties, the Press Herald reported.
With paralegals, investigators and other employees for these offices, the total price tag would be $8.9 million.
While this may seem like a lot of money, it is a needed investment in the constitutional rights and well being of low-income Mainers who currently may have to wait far too long for legal representation. This money will also help Maine courts clear backlogs of cases.
Last month, a judge rejected a proposed settlement of the ACLU lawsuit that sought to bring more lawyers into the existing system, with higher standards, while also building the public defender system. Justice Michaela Murphy said the proposed settlement did not do enough to ensure defendants’ constitutional rights were met. She was especially troubled by the low number of private lawyers willing to take on this work.
The parties are now back to the drawing board to look for other solutions.
Continuing to tweak Maine’s unique indigent defense system is not the long-term solution. When state lawmakers reconvene next year, building and funding a statewide system of public defenders must be a priority.
