Gideon soon turns 50, but "justice is still not being done," legislators told.

NYSDA Executive Director highlights systemic deficiencies at budget hearing.

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ALBANY, NY (02/06/2013)(readMedia)-- Failure to adequately fund and systemically fix the flawed public defense system created by New York State in 1965 prevents justice from being done. Jonathan E. Gradess, Executive Director of the New York State Defenders Association (NYSDA) told legislators this in testimony on February 6, 2013 before the Assembly Ways and Means Committee and State Senate Finance Committee. On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the United States Supreme Court's right to counsel decision, Gideon v. Wainwright, "justice is still not being done," Gradess said.

Without adequate state funding, counties cannot meet the responsibility delegated to them by New York State after Gideon, he noted. The State has not only failed to bring a state-funded, state-administered public defense system into being but has "also failed to provide adequate mandate relief to counties to provide these delegated services," Gradess said. He added that, "without resources adequate to the task, the guilty are often wrongly convicted for doing more than they did; the innocent are wrongly imprisoned for things they didn't do; [and] mothers and children are needlessly separated from one another...."

Gradess set out reasons why the State should fund NYSDA's Public Defense Backup Center at least at the amount it received last year and also fund a variety of other public defense related services that were cut or zero funded in the Executive Budget:

• NYSDA performs the State's Sixth Amendment Gideon backup function, helping bring some semblance of order to the statutorily-created patchwork defender system and providing county mandate relief, for which it should be fully funded by the State;

• The Indigent Legal Services Office needs to be able to distribute to localities every cent coming into the Indigent Legal Services Fund from dedicated revenue streams, and more, and needs an office budget sufficient to perform its statutory duties;

• Aid to Defense should be extended to all counties just like its much larger counterpart, Aid to Prosecution, has been, and cuts implemented since the 1980s should be restored;

• A program to reimburse counties for cases arising under the fully state-administered parole system, the Indigent Parolee Representation Program (IPP), should see its perpetual funding reductions reversed, as the State Senate took the lead toward last year; and

• Issues arising from the lawsuit against the State and five counties for deficiencies in public defense, including the failure to provide counsel at first appearance, should be addressed by the State with funding to the Indigent Legal Services Office.