Legal Service for the Poor Is Faulted

By DANNY HAKIM
Published: June 29, 2006

ALBANY, June 28 — Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye of New York said Wednesday that the state must take over administration of legal services to the poor, citing a crisis in the way county governments and New York City are providing legal aid in criminal cases.

Judge Kaye's call came in response to a judicial commission report saying local governments were falling well short of constitutional requirements in providing legal representation to the poor, and recommended that a permanent state commission be created to take over the responsibility. Twenty-eight other states have already taken similar steps.

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The commission report cited such problems as overburdened defenders who, in one county, average 1,000 misdemeanors and 175 felony cases in a year, and "grossly inadequate" financing. It also cited wide disparities in counties' spending and in the resources available to prosecutors and defenders. The state lacks standards to define what it means to provide adequate indigent defense and has no system for enforcing such standards, the report said.

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In a village court in Nassau County, for example, people charged with traffic violations are offered jail sentences of 3 to 10 days if they cannot afford fines, but are not offered legal representation. In Greene County, lawyers are not provided in felony cases until they are needed in court, meaning a defendant can be jailed without seeing a lawyer.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/29/nyregion/29indigent.html?hp&ex=1151553600&en=62f12d638d8c386d&ei=5094&partner=homepage

name is put into a lottery, and every 3-4 years, you're picked and assigned an indigent client. You cannot opt out except in extreme situations.

I've been selected for a defendent charged with driving w/o insurance, termination of parental rights, and getting a client out of jail when he had been held too long. The system works but I worry about the time in the future where I'll be in over my head if I'm assigned a case in which I have no familiarity with the law.

My career has been 80 percent clients who cannot pay me a dime (that's because I have another job . . . ), and I don't regret it.

Its a bought system.