New York Civil Liberties officials have data showing some court-appointed lawyers gave little to no aid to their defendants. They cited Onondaga County along with four others as having major deficits in their public defense system. Ray Mustafa Robinson is a Syracuse resident who has experienced the challenges of the public defense system firsthand:
“Finally after six months of court appearances I raised my hand in court and asked the judge myself for a hearing to look at the evidence and the judge agreed. Finally my assigned defense attorney and the prosecutor went over to the evidence room. They finally saw I was wrongly charged; the judge agreed.”
Robinson’s experience is one of the many outlined in a report issued by theNYCLU this morning. The report shows in Onondaga County 99.7 percent of public defense cases did not use investigators and one-third of public defendants never met with their attorney outside of the courtroom.
AMONG THE REPORTS FINDINGS:
- Experts were consulted in effectively zero percent of the tens of thousands of public defense cases in Suffolk County.
- In Onondaga, Suffolk and Schuyler counties, criminal defendants regularly appeared at arraignment without attorneys.
- In Onondaga County, where there are routinely more than 10,000 public defense cases a year, in 2012 defendants never met with an attorney outside of court in almost one-third of public defense cases. Most of them ultimately plead guilty to criminal charges.
- In parts of New York State, public defense attorneys have been known to carry 420 felonies a year – nearly three times the recommended maximum. Washington County failed to even track caseloads at all in 2012.
- In some counties, many attorneys spent more time billing than talking to their clients or witnesses.
- In Onondaga County, prosecutors received 35 times more public funds for investigation than public defense attorneys.
NYCLU Senior Staff Attorney Corey STOW-ton says the reforms outlined in the report would fix these problems:
“There will need to be lawyers at every arraignment and standing by the poor who need council. There needs to be something to address the case load problem, and there need to be rules and resources in place to ensure that lawyers are able to use investigators and other steps necessary to mount an effective defense for their client.”
The report outlines these potential reforms less than a month before the NYCLU’s lawsuit against the State of New York goes to trial. The class-action suit… the first of its kind in the United States… is calling for a statewide overhaul of the public defense system.
