News from Campaign for an Independent Public Defense Commission

For more information contact: Bob Liff at 212-608-0333 or cell 917-287-7089 or Jonathan E. Gradess for the Campaign at 518-465-0519

110 Organizations Endorse Independent Public Defense Commission, Including Innocence Project and NAACP

ALBANY, NY (05/12/2008; 1500)(readMedia)-- CAMPAIGN TO OVERHAUL STATE’S FAILED PUBLIC DEFENSE SYSTEM PRESSES LEGISLATURE, GOVERNOR TO EMBRACE EQUAL JUSTICE FOR THOSE UNABLE TO AFFORD PRIVATE LAWYERS

BLACK, PUERTO RICAN, HISPANIC AND ASIAN CAUCUS, STATE BAR MAKE CREATING INDEPENDENT PUBLIC DEFENSE COMMISSION A PRIORITY – INNOCENCE PROJECT AND NAACP NEW YORK CONFERENCE JOIN LONG LIST OF SUPPORTERS

NINE COUNTIES DENIED FUNDING BY STATE – CAMPAIGN URGES THEY BE MADE WHOLE AND THAT STATE BACK JUDGE KAYE’S CALL TO CREATE COMMISSION

New York’s long march towards equal justice is entering a critical phase as 110 organizational supporters (list attached) for creating an Independent Public Defense Commission step up calls on Governor Paterson and legislative leaders to embrace an Assembly proposal that would begin the process of overhauling the state’s failed, underfunded and unconstitutional system of public defense services for those unable to afford a private lawyer.

Initially presented in the Assembly's budget bill (A9806-B, Part Y), the proposal currently under discussion would create an Independent Public Defense Commission (IPDC) to evaluate the state’s existing county-based system of public defense, which a report to Chief Judge Kaye described as “an on-going crisis,” study specific cost questions about bringing New York into compliance with relevant standards, and report its findings and recommendations. The 2006 report to Judge Kaye, who has personally endorsed its findings, calls for creating an independent commission to carry out a state takeover of operations and financing of the county-based system, including promulgation of standards for caseloads and availability of investigatory resources that would move the state closer to compliance with standards embodied in the American Bar Association’s Ten Principles for a Public Defense Delivery System.

While the current proposal falls short of the goal set by the Campaign for an Independent Public Defense Commission, which calls for creation of the full statewide commission, the Campaign and its growing list of endorsers support the more limited commission, which would conduct further study of the system, making a preliminary report next fall, and a final report in the spring of 2009.

“The bill before the Assembly does not take us all the way to where Judge Kaye recommended, but it is an important step in that direction,” said Michael Whiteman, partner in the Albany law firm of Whiteman Osterman and Hanna and former general counsel to Governor Rockefeller, who chairs the Committee for an Independent Public Defense Commission, one of the Campaign's first supporters.

“'Justice delayed is justice denied' is more than a slogan,” said Whiteman. “It is time for lawmakers and Governor Paterson to join together to finally bring New York State into compliance with the Constitution.”

The discussions now underway are also focused on efforts by nine counties – Albany, Allegany, Delaware, Fulton, Genesee, Herkimer, Rockland, Washington and Yates – to counter a decision denying them state funds this year due to failure to meet maintenance of effort requirements contained in the law governing the Comptroller’s Indigent Legal Services Fund, which was created after the state raised the hourly rates of court-appointed lawyers under County Law 18-B.

The funding issue is part of a larger complaint from counties that public defense services amount to one of the largest underfunded mandates imposed by the state, which requires counties to provide the services but does not cover their costs. Public defense services cost counties a collective $271 million in 2007, while the state fund, designed to pay for enhancements, kicked in an additional $67 million. Disbursements for the nine counties which were zeroed out this year are held up pending negotiations concerning the Commission.

Both operational and financial shortcomings of the current county-based system are among the bases for a class action suit against the state by the New York Civil Liberties Union. That suit – which specifically cites problems in Onondaga, Ontario, Schuyler, Suffolk and Washington counties – charges the county-based system is failing so badly all across the state as to be unconstitutional and an affront to the right to effective counsel enshrined in the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainwright. A judge in Albany is currently weighing the NYCLU's request for emergency relief in the case.

Meanwhile, the Innocence Project, which has identified inadequate defense services as a significant factor in New York’s plague of wrongful convictions, and the N.A.A.C.P. New York Conference recently joined the growing list of groups and leaders endorsing the Campaign to create the IPDC.

By supporting the IPDC, the Innocence Project and New York N.A.A.C.P. join a long line of legal, civic, religious and other leaders and organizations including counties, defense groups, legal activists, religious organizations and the Legislature’s Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Caucus, whose leader, Assemblyman Darryl Towns, has announced that creating the independent commission is a priority for the caucus. Twenty-seven former New York State Bar Association presidents have joined the Committee for an Independent Public Defense Commission. The New York State Bar Association made passage of legislation creating a commission a 2008 legislative priority.

“This is the time to finally bring New York State in line with its professed commitment to equal justice by creating an Independent Public Defense Commission,” said Assemblyman Towns, D-Brooklyn. “It should come as no surprise that it is the communities that those of us in the legislature’s Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Caucus serve who suffer most from the injustices that result from the state’s failed system of public defense services.”

“For those of us who have fought for decades to improve our state’s dismal public defense system, this is the best opportunity to move us in the direction of equal justice,” said Jonathan Gradess, Executive Director of the New York State Defenders Association, another endorsing organization. “We hope lawmakers will seize this opportunity to establish the Commission while funding these nine counties that so desperately need the money.”

More information about the Campaign is available on its webpage, http://www.newyorkjusticefund.org/campaign.htm

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Attachments

List of organizations endorsing Campaign for an Independent Public Defense Commission
Orgs_only_supporters_list_5_12_08.pdf