Sequestration’s Biggest Victim: The Public Defender System

It’s roughly 164 miles from Lubbock, Texas, to Abilene; not the furthest drive you can do in the Lone Star State but still a bit of a haul. On a good day, you can make the trip in about three hours, which is what Helen Liggett discovered in April when she had to visit a client in the Taylor County Jail.

Liggett is an assistant federal public defender for the Northern District of Texas, based in Lubbock. Her client Leroy Gream had been caught on camera loading an ATM onto a cart and attempting to steal it from Hendrick Memorial Hospital in Abilene on Christmas Day of last year. Gream, 55, pleaded guilty to bank theft, a charge that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. But like most people who try to steal an ATM, he didn’t have the money to pay for his defense. Liggett was assigned to his case.

On April 8, she drove to Abilene to attend Gream’s arraignment at the federal courthouse, which was scheduled for the next day. On May 8, she went back for his interview with the United States probation office in preparation for his pre-sentencing report.

In each instance, Liggett chose to pay for the trip — $185 for gas and a hotel room — out of her own pocket. It was either that or not visit her client at all. The budget cuts brought on by sequestration wiped out any travel budget her office had.

In an age of across-the-board budget reductions, Liggett forewent all travel reimbursements for March, April and May. She began buying her own pens and copy paper. She’s also been furloughed one day a week and has occasionally taken on the furlough days of her lesser-paid secretary and paralegal. There used to be eight people in her office, but in late June, her boss said that they would have to make due with three. The office investigator subsequently announced he would retire.

“I still haven’t figured out how a lawyer can represent a criminal defendant without investigating the case,” Liggett said.

The public defender system hasn’t just been stripped bare by sequestration, its bones have been chiseled away as well. There has been a 9 percent reduction in the roughly $1 billion budget for federal public defender’s offices, while federal defenders in more than 20 states are planning to close offices. Careers have been ended and cases have been delayed. All of it has occurred in the name of deficit reduction — and yet, for all the belt-tightening being demanded of the nation’s public defenders, money is not actually being saved.

Read more here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/22/sequestration-public-defender_n_3624111.html

Last Friday night, my wife and I saw a production of “The Exonerated” which consisted of five stories of people who sat on Death Row for crimes they did not commit. It was real. It was moving. And it renewed one’s belief in the strength of the human character under the most difficult of adversities. Present at the theatre was Juan Rivera who was sat on Death Row in Illinois for seventeen years and was tried three times for a crime someone else committed. His story alone is not only inspiring but urges everyone who hears it to stand up when a wrong is being done and scream to the roof top that it must be righted. 

The production runs on Friday and Saturday nights through May 5 at the Josephine Louis Theatre at Northwestern. It is a must see.

Thomas C. Brandstrader

“privacy has never been equated with mere secrecy…Privacy is the right to control knowledge about our personal lives, the right to decide how much information gets revealed to whom and for which purpose.” Stephen J. Schulhofer, Professor, NYU Law.

MISSOURI v. McNEELY

certiorari to the supreme court of missouri

No. 11–1425. Argued January 9, 2013—Decided April 17, 2013

Respondent McNeely was stopped by a Missouri police officer for speeding and crossing the centerline. After declining to take a breath test to measure his blood alcohol concentration (BAC), he was arrested and taken to a nearby hospital for blood testing. The officer never attempted to secure a search warrant. McNeely refused to consent to the blood test, but the officer directed a lab technician to take a sample. McNeely’s BAC tested well above the legal limit, and he was charged with driving while intoxicated (DWI). He moved to suppress the blood test result, arguing that taking his blood without a warrant violated hisFourth Amendment rights. The trial court agreed, concluding that the exigency exception to the warrant requirement did not apply because, apart from the fact that McNeely’s blood alcohol was dissipating, no circumstances suggested that the officer faced an emergency. The State Supreme Court affirmed, relying on Schmerber v. California, 384 U. S. 757 , in which this Court upheld a DWI suspect’s warrantless blood test where the officer “might reasonably have believed that he was confronted with an emergency, in which the delay necessary to obtain a warrant, under the circumstances, threatened ‘the destruction of evidence,’ ” id., at 770. This case, the state court found, involved a routine DWI investigation where no factors other than the natural dissipation of blood alcohol suggested that there was an emergency, and, thus, the nonconsensual warrantless test violated McNeely’s right to be free from unreasonable searches of his person.

Held: The judgment is affirmed.

Read more here:

http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/569/11-1425/

Donate to LII: http://liicr.nl/GIVE2LII.

The two previous posts highlight the tragedy of the innocent in prison. While i know that our criminal justice system is made up of human beings, most trying to do their best, it is infected with a win at all costs attitude in many places whose obligation should be to see that justice is done no matter the outcome.

The uncovered letter in the Medill post is a perfect example of this attitude. The lead detective being told that the first doctor to examine the baby did not believe it was “Shaken Baby” yet goes on to encourage the prosecution’s “hired gun” expert to find otherwise and expresses his personal  comfort in knowing that she would eventually make things “right”.

The expert in Del Prete specialty was investigating child abuse. She employed a power point in  Del Prete that she used in every one of her SBS cases. During the trial she had to apologize to the court when the power point presentation,  supposedly prepared for the Del Prete case,  had obviously been used in other cases despite her assurances to the contrary.

Over thirty people testified for Jennifer. More at sentencing. Each one swore that the Jennifer Del Prete would never harm an infant or anyone else. The woman who ran the day care, who had the most to lose, testified at trial and at sentencing, and stated each time she was absolutely sure Jennifer did not harm the infant.

Never in thirty three years of criminal practice have I been involved in a matter where the person charged with the offense was more obviously innocent of the charge. I represented Jennifer on appeal of her conviction. I was bound by the record and thus was stuck with the presumption that the  trial court was deemed to only have considered relevant evidence. This is a difficult presumption to overcome and the circumstances of the decedent generated an unbreachable wall of sympathy. 

I filed the petition for post conviction relief for Jennifer. It was dismissed in the first stage by the same trial judge as merit-less  As I never had subpoena power (due to the petition never being docketed under the statute)  I was unable to possibly uncover the letter recently found by Medill. The failure of the prosecution to turn over this letter was a breach of Jennifer’s due process rights as it obviously indicates that the first state “expert” did not see SBS in his observations. I wonder why that professional did not stick to his guns? I am going to venture to say pressure was applied by those who had to win at all costs. 

Jennifer Del Prete is innocent. It is not that she is not not guilty….She is innocent. It is not that the State failed to prove her guilty…it is that she is innocent. She has been in jail for years for doing nothing more than trying to save a sick baby in her care…a baby that had been abused by someone else at a prior time…Jennifer has a  child too…there are many victims in this case…Jennifer is one of them….

Thomas C. Brandstrader