Public defenders: Overworked, Understaffed, Undaunted in Virginia. The situation is dismal in Georgia. It's even worse in Lousiana. Reform is needed in Alabama.

Friday, a judge in Louisiana appointed lawyers in four cases by looking in the phone book and making random calls.

The indigent defense system in this country needs a fix-- for starters, it needs adequate funding.

The New York Times has an editorial, Creating the Next Crime Wave that debunks the theory that prosecutors and tough sentencing laws are responsible for the drop in crime rate:

The United States has the largest, most expensive and fastest-growing prison system in the world, and it may be unsustainable over the long run. Faced with a national price tag for corrections that exceeds $50 billion per year, states are being forced to re-evaluate the stiff sentencing policies that drove up the prison population to more than 2 million, from 200,000 three decades ago. In recent years, 25 states have eased sentencing policies and reinstated early release and treatment programs for drug offenders, now about a quarter of the nation's prisoners....Over the last decade, national crime rates fell sharply. Prosecutors and the police rushed to take credit, arguing that crime had gone down because criminals had been locked up.

The problem with this explanation is that crime went down just as much in states that did not adopt tough new policing and sentencing strategies as in states that embraced them. The emerging consensus is that mass incarceration accounts for only a fraction of the drop in violent crime. The strong economy of the 1990's clearly played a role, as did demographic factors — and the ending of the crack epidemic, aided by teenagers who shunned the drug after seeing parents and older siblings destroyed.

We have written before about the 1998 law which denies federal benefits such as student loans to people who have been convicted of drug crimes. The New York Times today has an article with a scathing attack on the law from a fairly unexpected source: The representative who wrote it, Mark Souder (R-IN). "It is absurd on the face of it," he said.

His complaint was that he intended the law to apply to current college students who commit drug crimes, rather than people who have committed drug crimes in the past, and have completed their sentences.

"I am an evangelic Christian who believes in repentance, so why would I have supported that?" he said.

Do you know someone who can't get financial aid for college due to a drug conviction? The John W. Perry Fund is awarding scholarships to help.

[Hat tip to Ray R.]

Jeanne D'Arc of Body and Soul expresses perfectly why we all should be outraged at charging Melissa Rowland with murder for refusing a c-section and delivering a stillborn twin:

Look at the picture of Melissa Rowland in the BBC's coverage of the story and tell me that the prosecutors' narrative about a woman obsessed with her physical appearance makes sense. The BBC also adds a rather significant detail the AP left out: Rowland -- by her own testimony, at least -- had two previous C-sections. Another detail that might have been worth mentioning appears in the Salt Lake Tribune: Melissa Rowland has a long history of mental illness. She was first committed to a mental hospital when she was twelve years old.

Suddenly the narrative shifts a bit. A frightened, mentally ill, pregnant woman, living on Social Security disability benefits, facing eviction, the father of her children gone, went from hospital to hospital looking for help, and no one knew what to do for her or how to reach her. And because of that, she has been in jail for nearly two months and faces murder charges.

Our original post on the case is here.

This is absurd--and a dangerous precedent. A mentally ill woman refused a C-section while carrying twins and one was stillborn. She's now charged with first degree murder.

The case could affect abortion rights and open the door to the prosecution of mothers who smoke or don't follow their obstetrician's diet, said Marguerite Driessen, a law professor at Brigham Young University. "It's very troubling to have somebody come in and say we're going to charge this mother for murder because we don't like the choices she made," she said.

A new report finds that Louisiana fails to reach 9 out of 10 indigent defense standards:

If you’re poor in Louisiana, you have no real access to justice. This is the inevitable conclusion of In Defense of Public Access to Justice: An Assessment of Trial-Level Indigent Defense Services in Louisiana 40 Years After Gideon, a report released today by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and researched by the National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA). Rather than constructing a “uniform system for securing and compensating qualified counsel for indigents” at “each stage of the proceeding” as required by the Louisiana Constitution, In Defense of Public Access to Justice documents “the significant extent to which Louisiana has failed to protect the rights of people of insufficient means faced with the potential loss of liberty in criminal proceedings.” (Report at p. 19).

Forty-one years ago, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court concluded in the case of Gideon v. Wainwright that the right to counsel in criminal proceedings is a fundamental part of due process and that state governments are responsible for providing a public defense system that ensures this basic right. In Defense of Public Access to Justice documents that Louisiana fails to meet nine of the American Bar Association’s well-respected 10 Principles of a Public Defense Delivery System – principles designed to provide guidance to policymakers as they seek to ensure compliance with the Gideon mandate. “The substantial failing of the system to meet these standards can only mean that the indigent defense system devised by the legislature in Louisiana delivers ineffective, inefficient, poor quality, unethical, conflict-ridden representation to the poor.” (Report at p. 56)

Attorney General John Ashcroft's gallbladder removal surgery was a success. He'll be recuperating for several days in the hospital. Maybe he will have a laptop and internet connection. Let's send him some messages--not insults, remember, he's ill and it's bad karma to send ill will to anyone who's sick. We're thinking more about some constructive suggestions and well-mannered expressions of why his policies have been wrong for the Constitution and the American people. If we get some good ones, we'll print them and mail them to him inside a "get well" card.

Remember, what goes around comes around, so think twice before saying bad things about a person in ill health.

by TChris

When elected policy makers, the courts, and the public cannot agree whether gay marriage is or should be legal, nothing could be sillier than arresting a mayor for conducting same sex marriages. And so, of course, that is exactly what happened.

New Paltz Mayor Jason West was arrested yesterday for 19 counts of "solemnizing a marriage without a license," a misdemeanor under New York law. West conducted marriage ceremonies for 25 same sex couples.

Is what he did illegal? State officials have no easy answer. Governor George Pataki thinks that New York defines marriage as a union of husband and wife, but Attorney General Eliot Spitzer isn't so sure that's the law.

"My personal view, just stepping back from a detailed legal analysis, is that the law is clear, the law is being broken, and that it is appropriate to seek an injunction" against more same-sex marriages in the state, Mr. Pataki said. "The attorney general has indicated he does not agree with that," he said. "We are waiting for his analysis."

If the law isn't clear, why is the mayor being charged with a crime? As an elected official, his job is to make judgment calls on matters of public policy. If his judgment is that the logic applied by the Massachusetts Supreme Court also applies in New York, he should not face criminal liability simply because some other official believes the mayor's view of the law is mistaken.

Using the criminal justice system to punish a public official for taking an unpopular stance is abusive. The charges against Mayor West should be dismissed.

Update: New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer split the baby in half, announcing that New York law only permits marriage between a man and a woman while declining to opine whether that law violates the state constitution.

The latest, misguided target of the Bush Administration's War on Drugs is prescription abuse--for pain killers, sedatives and stimulants. A crackdown was announced yesterday.

Under the strategy announced Monday, the government will pay states to help develop monitoring systems to track patients' drug use. The programs would flag cases indicating a pattern of abuse, such as ``doctor shopping,'' where a patient gets prescriptions for drugs from multiple physicians.

Federal officials also plan to seek out pharmacies that sell controlled substances illegally over the Internet, which will entail deploying modern Web-crawler technology. to search out those peddling prescription drugs online.

Under President Bush's proposed 2005 budget, funds to attack the illicit use of prescription drugs would increase by $20 million, to $138 million. Most of the money would be directed at reducing the abuse of opium- and morphine-based painkillers, which are among the most widely prescribed medications.

Pain doctors and some advocates for patients with chronic pain say the government has become overzealous and has created a "chilling effect" that keeps many doctors from prescribing painkillers that patients need. They argue that the more pressing problem regarding painkillers is that so many patients in pain are not getting them.

What effect will this have on consumers? Plenty.

Some progress in fighting drug war hysteria: The Drug Enforcement Administration will allow a South Carolina doctor to treat 12 trauma victims with Ecstasy to study the drug's therapeutic potential.

The DEA's move marks a historic turn for a drug that has long been both venerated and vilified. Ecstasy, also known as MDMA, is popular among casual drug users for its reputed capacity to engender feelings of love, trust and compassion. The government classifies it with LSD and heroin as a drug with no known medical use and high potential for abuse.

Although the study's approval is by no means a federal endorsement of uncontrolled use, it will give ecstasy's proponents their first legitimate opportunity to prove the drug can offer medical benefits.

Drug courts have been around state courts for years, but now, federal judges in North Dakota are thinking of bringing them to federal court:

The saddest day in the world is when we lock people up for the rest of their lives because they have drug problems," said U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson, of Fargo. Erickson and other federal judges are working on a drug court plan under which minor federal drug offenders could face strict supervision and treatment rather than long jail sentences.

The proposal also could include people on their way out of the prison system, said Rich Crawford, North Dakota's chief federal probation officer.....Crawford said bringing such a program to the federal court system in North Dakota would be a welcome change. "I really wish Congress would see the benefit of this type of program as opposed to just harsh sentencing guidelines," he said.

Even the U.S. Attorney in Fargo is open to the plan:

While federal prosecutors typically focus on large trafficking operations, the system could be used for people who plead guilty to lesser charges and testify in drug investigations, U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley said. "I'm intrigued by it and open to it," he said.

Our view: From their mouths, to Ashcroft's ears. More information on drug courts is available here.

The 2003 edition of the FBI's Handbook on Forensic Services is now available.

The purpose of the Handbook of Forensic Services is to provide guidance and procedures for safe and efficient methods of collecting, preserving, packaging, and shipping evidence and to describe the forensic examinations performed by the FBI's Laboratory Division and Investigative Technology Division.

Law enforcement can get a free copy by faxing a request. For the rest of us, you can get it through the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) for $50 in hard copy or $35 on cd-rom. Order it here.