Feb. 7 (UPI) — A lawsuit filed Monday in Louisiana alleges the state is negligent in guaranteeing constitutional rights of poor people by not properly funding or maintaining the public defender system.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and two other law firms filed a class action suit Monday in Baton Rouge against Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and the Louisiana Public Defender Board, as well as Jay Dixon, the state’s chief public defender, with denying poor people their right to proper representation in court.
The suit claims the inmates and defendants who cannot afford an attorney don’t have access to one, as state budget cuts have made it so three-quarters of public defenders’ offices in the states either stopped accepting new cases or put people on long waiting lists. In the cases of many inmates, they may not hear from their attorneys for years, despite needing to file appeals or other documents.
“The state of Louisiana is the incarceration capital of the world, jailing more people per capita than any other state in the United States and more than most countries across the globe,” Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told WGNO-TV. “Due to racial disparities that infect every stage of the criminal justice system, the vast majority of those impacted are black and minority communities. While incarcerating people at every turn, many for low-level, nonviolent offenses, the state fails to meet its constitutional obligation to provide counsel to the poor. This suit seeks to bring long overdue relief to communities that have literally been left defenseless for far too long.”
Roughly 85 percent of people accused of a crime in Louisiana are indigent — in a state with the highest incarceration rate and second-highest wrongful incarceration rate in the country — making the system important for those attempting to defend themselves.
The public defender’s system in Louisiana is funded primarily through court fees and fines, including fees from convicted indigent defendants, and some matches by the state for local funding, but shortfalls have grown in recent years, advocates involved with the lawsuit say.
The goal of the lawsuit is not the release of anyone currently incarcerated or monetary gain. The suit seeks, instead, to require the state to run a proper public defender program so that inmates and defendants have access to proper legal representation in the future.
“State officials and politicians have looked the other way as the system has fallen further into crisis,” Lisa Graybill, deputy legal director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in a press release. “They’ve had the chance to fix it and they have failed, time and again. The operation of a two-tiered system of justice degrades our state, violates our state and federal constitutions and simply cannot continue. We have asked the court to intervene because the poor in this state can wait no longer for justice.”
