Even though I am a hard-liner, I have always been bothered by the inequality of our criminal justice system. In jurisdictions that do not have a public defender's office, equal justice is a joke and defendants without the means to hire competent attorneys are often simply flushed down the toilet.
What got my dander up this time is a newspaper account concerning a state district court judge in Houston who ordered the arrest of one defendant for not hiring a lawyer and threatened to jail another defendant for not being able to afford legal counsel. What in the world was this pompous asshole thinking?
Most people are not aware of or give any thought to the problems indigent defendants face in our courts of jusitce. To begin with, what is an indigent? The American Heritage Dictionary defines indigent as "(1) lacking the means of subsistence; impoverished. (2) a destitute or needy person." That definition allows judges some leeway in determining whether or not a defendant is truly indigent. There is a difference between being impoverished and being a needy person.
Most defendants are part-time criminals as opposed to career criminals who make a full-time living from burglarizing people's homes and businesses. Many hold down jobs and try to support a family, often with three or four children. Since most criminals are undereducated, it stands to reason that they do not command a good income in the job market and, if they have a bunch of kids, find it hard to provide food, clothing and shelter for their families.
The standard for indigence varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In California, a state which has a very good public defender system, the courts take a reasonable approach in determining the idigence of a defendant. If the defendant can show that by hiring an attorney he will no longer be able to adequately provide for his family, the courts will provide him a public defender. The same holds true in the federal court system.
In other jurisdictions, like Houston, where indigents are provided bottom feeder court appointed attorneys, the courts hold that if a defendant has a job, no matter how little it pays or how many children he has, he is not indigent - tough shit, case closed! And in those jurisdictions, you will find assholes like Woody Densen, the pompous judge who ordered the arrest of a defendant for not hiring a lawyer and threatened to arrest another because he could not afford one. To add insult to injury, the Texas Commission on Judical Conduct dismissed a complaint filed against Denson by a group of lawyers for his reprehensible conduct in those cases.
When the courts rule that a defendant who has a job must hire his own lawyer, they cause the defendant to shift his income from providing for his family to paying for an attorney. That in effect is punishing the criminal's family, which could victimize them even more than the person(s) the defendant stole from. And guess what? Over the long haul, we will probably end up paying much more by prividing welfare funds to the defendant's family than what it would have cost to provide him with an attorney.
In states where judges are elected on a partisan ballot, the inequity problem will be more pronounced than in states where the election of judges is non-partisan. Judges who ran for office on a tough law and order Republican ticket and got elected, are more fiscally conservative and are likely to be harder on criminals than their Democratic counterparts.
Thus Republican judges, as compared to Democratic judges, are less likely to declare defendants indigent. That is one reason I have long advocated that elected officials responsible for the administration of justice - judges, sheriffs and prosecutors - should be required to run for office only in strictly non-partisan elections.
The inequity of the justice system can also be found in the nation's traffic courts. Most traffic violations carry with them a standard fine. For instance, suppose the fine for running a red light, a serious traffic offense, is $150. If you plead or are found guilty of running the light, most judges will make you pay the full amount, although some will alow you to pay it off in installments. Where does the inequality come in?
A person who can afford a luxury car will have no trouble paying a $150 fine. However, to a single mother of two or more children holding down a minimum wage job, $150 can be the difference between puttin food on the table or going without, even if she is given the chance to pay off the fine in several installments. To that mother, $15 would hurt as much if not more than a well off person's $150 fine.
The trouble with traffic fines is that they are the cash cow that, aside from taxes, funds city governments. Accordingly, traffic judges are pressured into handing out the full standard fines, regardless of the offenders financial condition. They are discouraged from suspending any part of those fines.
Whatever happened to tempering justice with mercy? It would seem reasonable that, in the interest of equal justice, a traffic judge would fine that single mother $150 and suspend all but $15 dollars of that fine. In that way she is still being punished and her punishment would actually be no less severe than the $150 the driver of a Lexus or Mercedes Benz would have had to pay.
Over the years, I've seen a bunch of poor slobs get the short end of the stick simply because they could not afford competent counsel. I've seen them lose their jobs simply because they could not raise bail. I do not want to imply they were innocent because, in fact, they were guilty. But their fate would have been far different had they been represented by good lawyers, and that could have made the difference between a sentence of life or death.
Despite compelling evidence of his guilt, O. J. Simpson got away with double murder because he could afford a dream team of lawyers. Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro, F. Lee Bailey, Barry Scheck and Alan Dershowitz overwhelmed prosecutors Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden and the state's witnesses. Instead of being behind bars where he belongs, Simpson continues to enjoy the good life on the golf course and in night clubs. As long as money is the engine that drives the administration of justice there will be no equal justice for all.
No comments:
Post a Comment