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Detroit’s Indigent Defense System Fails Poor Defendants

78 points by danso 7y ago

crooked-v 7y ago
Wow, that text is really huge. I had to hit zoom out by two levels to make it actually readable.
- warent 7y ago
  It's refreshing to actually see a font on a site that doesn't give me a headache to read!
- happytoexplain 7y ago
  Really? It looks quite comfortable to me. For reference, I see an x-height of about 9 points on WaPo, 10 on NYT, and 11 here.
- inetknght 7y ago
  Use Firefox's reader mode.
CamJN 7y ago
> In the past five years, she has taken 3,802 cases, including 1,787 new felonies, according to data from Michigan’s Third Judicial Circuit Court. That’s more than one felony case every workday—excluding the ones involving simple probation violations, which Cameron also takes hundreds of each year. 3802/(5*365.25) ≈ 2.08 cases per day, every day in those five years including weekends, not just "more than one per workday". There is no way these cases are being handled adequately. I get that the more than one a day refers just to felonies, but it's still ridiculous.
- tyingq 7y ago
  She probably has a spreadsheet or similar that the DA has (off the record) agreed to that calculates plea deals. Then most of the work goes to her staff.
  - exhilaration 7y ago
    After reading the article, I'm pretty sure she doesn't have any staff.
  - jandrese 7y ago
    She's a public defender. She doesn't have a staff. The state can barely afford her wage as it is.
    - socialist_coder 7y ago
      I'm pretty sure the article says she is a private attorney who gets overload cases. These are all paid by the case so it is in the best interest of the attorney to cut a deal quickly rather than do any kind of investigation or work.
      - jandrese 7y ago
        She's a private version of the public defender, taking on as many cases as possible to get the check from the state for each one. It's still all about minimizing costs while maximizing profits and not fretting about the little things like guilt or innocence.
- anamexis 7y ago
  The quote is "more than one felony case every workday," and the number of felony cases was 1,787, yielding 1787/(5*261) ≈ 1.37 felony cases per workday.
  - brewdad 7y ago
    She gets 10 public holidays a year off and probably another 2-3 weeks of vacation/sick time. 1787/(5*236)= 1.51 felony cases per workday.
chrisco255 7y ago
“Probably 95 percent of the people that are charged with something are guilty of something,” she asserted. “They may not be guilty of what they’re exactly charged with, but they may be guilty of a lesser offense, okay? … And you have probably 90 percent of those people who are looking for the best deal possible.” What a disturbing quote and very telling about the state of our justice system.
- tyingq 7y ago
  Also notable: "Since 2014, for example, she has only visited one client in jail, according to court receipts." So any strategy discussion is minutes before copping a plea, etc. I'd call it a plea mill. Ugh.
- noonespecial 7y ago
  Even more chilling considering that thanks to the state of the law today we are all guilty of some "lesser offense" right now. It would be interesting to calculate the "default jail sentence" of the average citizen if an overzealous prosecutor decided to randomly harass them.
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
    This is a somewhat common sentiment, probably because it's cynical enough to conform with people's prior conceptions. But I doubt it is actually true. Consider, for example, the various congressional investigations of Hilary Clinton in 2014/2015. If everybody was guilty of some crime(s) punishable by jail time, it would follow that some of those overly brought criminal statues would have come up in those proceedings, considering there were any number of high-powered lawyers tasked with finding anything against her that would stick. (The Clinton example may be imperfect because of partisanship, but I can't currently think of any other widely-known case where prosecutors were trying to "throw the book" at someone. I'm specifically not focussing on the main issues of those investigations, because those could never apply to the average person, so resist the urge to argue e-mail servers.)
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
tynpeddler 7y ago
Here's a serious question, what's preventing the pool of public defenders and the DA's from being the same people? Would lawyers in this position be influenced to throw defense cases for the sake of their police and judge buddies? Would they be willing to accept the potential professional consequences of having an abysmal defense record? Such a system could provide a lot of incentive for attorneys to maintain a more professional and appropriate relationship with law enforcement, but there may also be confounding factors I'm not seeing. Philosophically, DA's and public defenders fulfill a similar role in society. They both serve the public in fact-finding for criminal investigations through an adversarial process before a court of law. Depriving defendants of competent council severely undermines the entire process.
- awillen 7y ago
  This is a really interesting thought - even having DAs spend 10% of their time on the other side of the aisle would probably help ensure less of an us-vs-them mentality. Plus being on the other side once in a while would likely make them better at prosecuting the cases that they're working on.
- socialist_coder 7y ago
  DA's can actually do a lot to help these kinds of defendants from the DA side, because they can be more lenient, merciful, etc. The problem sometimes is that the boss DA is still the boss and can just tell any of his assistant DAs to go after people so he looks "tough on crime". So even if all the ADAs are very empathetic, they aren't the ones making every decision. I've listened to a lot of interviews with DAs and a lot of them actually do want to help these kinds of poor defendants, so they start out as public defenders. But then they realize that the real power is in the DA's office with sentencing and charging and such, so they switch over.
- mirimir 7y ago
  In my experience, former DAs make the best defense counsel. They know how stuff works. And they have friends.
mirimir 7y ago
Those who've followed the cypherpunks list for many years know Jim Bell. Of Assassination Politics (AP) fame. So maybe a year or two ago, he proposed setting up a GoFundMe-style NGO that would take every federal criminal case to trial. The argument being that it wouldn't take more than 10% (or whatever) to overload the system. And so defendants would get cases tossed based on the 6th Amendment.
- ryacko 7y ago
  One billion dollars is spent per year on public defenders. The Justice Department spends twenty-eight billion dollars. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/us/public-defenders-are-tightening-belts-because-of-steep-federal-budget-cuts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/us/public-defenders-are-t...
  - mirimir 7y ago
    So it'd be a huge NGO, I guess.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Also, from that article: > The result, said lawmakers, judges and public defenders, are court delays that might violate defendants’ rights to speedy trials and could lead to the dismissal of criminal cases. That does imply that the system is close to overload.
- ThrustVectoring 7y ago
  The problem with this is that prosecutors have the discretion to offer more and more lopsided plea deals in order to fix the backlog of cases, and discretion to go after defendants that insist on a trial as hard as possible. Are you really going to turn down 6 months if there's a very real chance that you're going to get 25-to-life through a trial? If insisting on a trial means you spend weeks in prison and lose your job and house? The solution is to give money to people who insist on or get a jury trial. Enough to make the "wait in jail for a trial instead of getting released immediately" feasible for people with families, and enough to make the risk of greater sentences at trial worth risking.
rmason 7y ago
This type of system is very prevalent in Michigan. In the Lansing area things got so bad there was a successful push to establish an office of public defender with full time attorneys. Probably not enough public defenders, but a huge step up from where they were before. https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2018/12/11/assistant-prosecutor-named-chief-public-defender-ingham-county/2280778002/ https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2018/12... This type of system is what should happen in Detroit, but only if the public pushes hard for it will they find the funds.

78 points by danso 7y ago

crooked-v 7y ago

Wow, that text is really huge. I had to hit zoom out by two levels to make it actually readable.

warent 7y ago
It's refreshing to actually see a font on a site that doesn't give me a headache to read!
happytoexplain 7y ago
Really? It looks quite comfortable to me. For reference, I see an x-height of about 9 points on WaPo, 10 on NYT, and 11 here.
inetknght 7y ago
Use Firefox's reader mode.

CamJN 7y ago

> In the past five years, she has taken 3,802 cases, including 1,787 new felonies, according to data from Michigan’s Third Judicial Circuit Court. That’s more than one felony case every workday—excluding the ones involving simple probation violations, which Cameron also takes hundreds of each year. 3802/(5*365.25) ≈ 2.08 cases per day, every day in those five years including weekends, not just "more than one per workday". There is no way these cases are being handled adequately. I get that the more than one a day refers just to felonies, but it's still ridiculous.

tyingq 7y ago
She probably has a spreadsheet or similar that the DA has (off the record) agreed to that calculates plea deals. Then most of the work goes to her staff.
- exhilaration 7y ago
  After reading the article, I'm pretty sure she doesn't have any staff.
- jandrese 7y ago
  She's a public defender. She doesn't have a staff. The state can barely afford her wage as it is.
  - socialist_coder 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure the article says she is a private attorney who gets overload cases. These are all paid by the case so it is in the best interest of the attorney to cut a deal quickly rather than do any kind of investigation or work.
    - jandrese 7y ago
      She's a private version of the public defender, taking on as many cases as possible to get the check from the state for each one. It's still all about minimizing costs while maximizing profits and not fretting about the little things like guilt or innocence.
anamexis 7y ago
The quote is "more than one felony case every workday," and the number of felony cases was 1,787, yielding 1787/(5*261) ≈ 1.37 felony cases per workday.
- brewdad 7y ago
  She gets 10 public holidays a year off and probably another 2-3 weeks of vacation/sick time. 1787/(5*236)= 1.51 felony cases per workday.

chrisco255 7y ago

“Probably 95 percent of the people that are charged with something are guilty of something,” she asserted. “They may not be guilty of what they’re exactly charged with, but they may be guilty of a lesser offense, okay? … And you have probably 90 percent of those people who are looking for the best deal possible.” What a disturbing quote and very telling about the state of our justice system.

tyingq 7y ago
Also notable: "Since 2014, for example, she has only visited one client in jail, according to court receipts." So any strategy discussion is minutes before copping a plea, etc. I'd call it a plea mill. Ugh.
noonespecial 7y ago
Even more chilling considering that thanks to the state of the law today we are all guilty of some "lesser offense" right now. It would be interesting to calculate the "default jail sentence" of the average citizen if an overzealous prosecutor decided to randomly harass them.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 7y ago
  This is a somewhat common sentiment, probably because it's cynical enough to conform with people's prior conceptions. But I doubt it is actually true. Consider, for example, the various congressional investigations of Hilary Clinton in 2014/2015. If everybody was guilty of some crime(s) punishable by jail time, it would follow that some of those overly brought criminal statues would have come up in those proceedings, considering there were any number of high-powered lawyers tasked with finding anything against her that would stick. (The Clinton example may be imperfect because of partisanship, but I can't currently think of any other widely-known case where prosecutors were trying to "throw the book" at someone. I'm specifically not focussing on the main issues of those investigations, because those could never apply to the average person, so resist the urge to argue e-mail servers.)
  - mehrdadn 7y ago

tynpeddler 7y ago

Here's a serious question, what's preventing the pool of public defenders and the DA's from being the same people? Would lawyers in this position be influenced to throw defense cases for the sake of their police and judge buddies? Would they be willing to accept the potential professional consequences of having an abysmal defense record? Such a system could provide a lot of incentive for attorneys to maintain a more professional and appropriate relationship with law enforcement, but there may also be confounding factors I'm not seeing. Philosophically, DA's and public defenders fulfill a similar role in society. They both serve the public in fact-finding for criminal investigations through an adversarial process before a court of law. Depriving defendants of competent council severely undermines the entire process.

awillen 7y ago
This is a really interesting thought - even having DAs spend 10% of their time on the other side of the aisle would probably help ensure less of an us-vs-them mentality. Plus being on the other side once in a while would likely make them better at prosecuting the cases that they're working on.
socialist_coder 7y ago
DA's can actually do a lot to help these kinds of defendants from the DA side, because they can be more lenient, merciful, etc. The problem sometimes is that the boss DA is still the boss and can just tell any of his assistant DAs to go after people so he looks "tough on crime". So even if all the ADAs are very empathetic, they aren't the ones making every decision. I've listened to a lot of interviews with DAs and a lot of them actually do want to help these kinds of poor defendants, so they start out as public defenders. But then they realize that the real power is in the DA's office with sentencing and charging and such, so they switch over.
mirimir 7y ago
In my experience, former DAs make the best defense counsel. They know how stuff works. And they have friends.

mirimir 7y ago

Those who've followed the cypherpunks list for many years know Jim Bell. Of Assassination Politics (AP) fame. So maybe a year or two ago, he proposed setting up a GoFundMe-style NGO that would take every federal criminal case to trial. The argument being that it wouldn't take more than 10% (or whatever) to overload the system. And so defendants would get cases tossed based on the 6th Amendment.

ryacko 7y ago
One billion dollars is spent per year on public defenders. The Justice Department spends twenty-eight billion dollars. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/us/public-defenders-are-tightening-belts-because-of-steep-federal-budget-cuts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/24/us/public-defenders-are-t...
- mirimir 7y ago
  So it'd be a huge NGO, I guess.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Also, from that article: > The result, said lawmakers, judges and public defenders, are court delays that might violate defendants’ rights to speedy trials and could lead to the dismissal of criminal cases. That does imply that the system is close to overload.
ThrustVectoring 7y ago
The problem with this is that prosecutors have the discretion to offer more and more lopsided plea deals in order to fix the backlog of cases, and discretion to go after defendants that insist on a trial as hard as possible. Are you really going to turn down 6 months if there's a very real chance that you're going to get 25-to-life through a trial? If insisting on a trial means you spend weeks in prison and lose your job and house? The solution is to give money to people who insist on or get a jury trial. Enough to make the "wait in jail for a trial instead of getting released immediately" feasible for people with families, and enough to make the risk of greater sentences at trial worth risking.

rmason 7y ago

This type of system is very prevalent in Michigan. In the Lansing area things got so bad there was a successful push to establish an office of public defender with full time attorneys. Probably not enough public defenders, but a huge step up from where they were before. https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2018/12/11/assistant-prosecutor-named-chief-public-defender-ingham-county/2280778002/ https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2018/12... This type of system is what should happen in Detroit, but only if the public pushes hard for it will they find the funds.