Litigation

Anderson v. State: Class-Action Addressing Pre-Trial Detention in Calcasieu

(916 So.2d 431, La. App. 3d Cir. 2005)

John Anderson was in jail for six months without ever meeting an attorney. Mr. Anderson’s public defender did not appear at his bond hearing and did not answer the letters and calls that he made to learn about his case. Although he had no criminal history, Mr. Anderson knew that he was being denied the justice that the constitution demands. 

Mr. Anderson’s case is not unique.  With a legal budget in 2005 that can only afford to hire nine-lawyers, the Public Defender’s Office for the Parish of Calcasieu cannot handle the more than 5,000 cases that it is assigned every year. The legal staff is overworked and underpaid and their poor clients are the ones who suffer. The average person arrested for a crime in Calcasieu Parish sits in jail for 186 days before even learning what crime they are charged with. These problems have made Lake Charles home to one of the most dysfunctional criminal defense systems in the country.

Mr. Anderson – and eight other individuals stuck in jail without proper access to an attorney – filed a class action lawsuit against the State of Louisiana, Governor Blanco and the Louisiana State Legislature for their fundamental failure in providing an adequate public defense system for indigent clients. Although the Louisiana Supreme Court has declared that the Louisiana Constitution “mandates” that the legislature “provide indigent defendants with qualified legal counsel,” the State of Louisiana has dramatically under-funded the system, leaving people like Mr. Anderson unable to get appropriate representation. Attorneys in the Public Defender Office simply cannot effectively represent their clients when they are forced to work on hundreds of cases at the same time. 

A Louisiana Court of Appeals recently affirmed that Mr. Anderson’s complaint was legitimate and “of great import statewide” because it alleges that indigent defendants in Louisiana are receiving illegal treatment by a system that leaves human beings without access to a fair trial.

Today, public defenders in Calcasieu Parish are still overwhelmed by enormous caseloads, some 2-3 times in excess of state and national standards. This results in excessively long pre-trial detention times, limited opportunities for defenders to visit clients in jail and significant constraints in their ability to provide zealous advocacy for their clients. This case is currently being reviewed to assess the impact of the Louisiana Public Defender Reform Act on the resources of the Calcasieu Public Defender Office and the quality of representation that it is able to provide to its clients.

 

State v. Citizen: Louisiana Supreme Court Demands Funding for Indigent Defense

(898 So.2d 325, 2005)

In the 2005 case State v. Citizen, the Louisiana Supreme Court confronted the “obvious deficiencies” that plague the Louisiana indigent defense system. Despite a constitutional mandate that requires the Louisiana legislature to “provide for a uniform system for securing and compensating qualified counsel for indigents”, Louisiana was failing to fund the Indigent Defense Assistance Board it had established to meet that constitutional duty. This funding deficit robbed poor defendants of their right to effective assistance of counsel because it left public defenders unable to mount adequate defenses. 

The attorney for Adrian Citizen – a poor man with no money to hire a lawyer – told the Louisiana Supreme Court that this financial shortfall was unconstitutional and asked the Court to hold the Louisiana legislature to its obligation to provide appropriate funding for indigent defense.

Finding that Louisiana had “failed to provide adequate appropriation to support” statewide indigent defense services, the Louisiana Supreme Court determined that the constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel requires the State to provide adequate funds to attorneys representing the poor. The Supreme Court declared that the “obvious deficiencies” in indigent defense funding required it to “take corrective measures to ensure that indigent defendants are provided with their constitutional and statutory rights.” The Court asserted that a trial judge should “prohibit the State from going forward with [a] prosecution” until “adequate funds become available to provide [indigent defendants’] constitutionally protected right to counsel.” Finally, the Court maintained that its decision should not alter a defendant’s right to a speedy trial. 

The unanimous decision in State v. Citizen stands as a formal acknowledgment that a failure to fund Louisiana’s indigent defense system violates the constitution by denying defendants their right to a fair trial. It further gives trial judges the dramatic authority to halt the prosecution of certain defendants when the defense does not have adequate resources.

State v. Peart: Accused Persons are Entitled to Effective Assistance of Counsel

(621 So.2d 780, 1993)

In its 1993 decision State v. Peart, the Louisiana Supreme Court declared that Louisiana “faced a crisis in its indigent defense system.” A young public defender named Rick Teissier stood before the Court and said that he was unable to provide his client Leonard Peart with the effective assistance of counsel that was required by the United States and Louisiana constitutions.

Mr. Teissier was typical of a hard-working but over-extended and under-resourced Louisiana public defender; forced to defend hundreds of cases at one time without any money for investigative support, expert witnesses, or even a legal library. These staggering deficiencies meant that his clients were pushed through the criminal justice system and into jail without being given a fair chance to defend themselves. Mr. Teissier’s clients – like thousands of other individuals who were being represented by public defenders – were being denied the type of legal assistance that they were entitled. Mr. Teissier brought these complaints before the Louisiana Supreme Court with the hope that it would put an end to “systematic inequalities of the Louisiana indigent defender system.”

The Louisiana Supreme Court agreed with Mr. Teissier and declared that the every criminal defendant is entitled to a lawyer who will effectively represent him. Noting the “general pattern” of “chronic underfunding of indigent defense programs” in Louisiana, the Court asserted that the indigent defense service is “so lacking that defendants who must depend on it are not likely to be receiving the reasonably effective assistance of counsel that the constitution guarantees.” 

The Court further stressed that it took “reasonably effective assistance of counsel to mean that the lawyer not only possesses adequate skill and knowledge, but also that he has the time and resources to apply his skill and knowledge to the task of defending each of his individual clients.” The Court went on to state that a defendant cannot be put on trial unless Louisiana fixed a system that provided counsel “who [were] so overworked as to be effectively unqualified.” The Louisiana Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Peart is a clear pronouncement that every defendant has a constitutional right to be represented by an attorney who has the skill, time, and resources to mount a vigorous defense.