| In March, Hartman visited Venango County at the request of the American Civil Liberties Union, which forced Allegheny County to beef up its public defender system and now is focusing on rural Venango County, about 85 miles north of Pittsburgh.
Yesterday, Witold Walczak, executive director of the Pittsburgh chapter of the ACLU, announced that his office has joined forces with the national ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to try to change the way Venango County treats indigent defendants.
In a June 4 letter to Venango County officials they demanded that the county hire more public defenders, an investigator and a social worker, fund a training program for attorneys and make other changes to improve legal services for indigent criminals, which are mandated by law. The letter asked for cooperation, but threatened litigation if changes aren't made by August.
"Venango County is one of the worst we have seen," said Marvin Schechter, a New York City lawyer who is co-chairman of the indigent defense committee of the criminal defense lawyers.
The chief judge, chairman of the commissioners and county solicitor of Venango County did not return phone calls.
Hartman not only found that defendants without assets are likely to sit in jail without legal representation in Venango, but they must go through a peculiar procedure in order to get a lawyer.
He said the jail policy doesn't allow inmates to make phone calls, even to the public defender's office.
On Mondays, the law librarian and public defender secretary visit the jail and give each new defendant an application for free legal services.
The application is forwarded to the jail warden, who reviews it before sending it to the public defender's office.
"As a result of various policies ... in Venango County, a defendant could be virtually incommunicado for a period of anywhere from three to 10 days after arrest, without seeing his counsel, without a motion for bail reduction, without a chance to ensure that his witnesses will be available for court," Hartman wrote.
He said the idea that the warden is allowed to review the defendant's application for a free lawyer may be unconstitutional.
The Venango County public defender's office, which was recently reorganized, has two full-time lawyers, a secretary and a part-time paralegal/investigator, said James Blackwood, the recently named chief public defender.
The two lawyers handle almost 1,200 cases a year, which far exceeds the caseload standards recommended for public defenders by the American Bar Association. It recommends that public defenders handle no more than 150 felonies, or 400 misdemeanors, or 200 juvenile cases, or 200 mental commitment cases, or 25 appeals in a one-year period.
Virginia Sharp, the former chief public defender, quit in March after she was unable to convince the county commissioners to increase staffing of the program.
She said the ACLU became interested in the situation when the commissioners explored the idea of trying to turn the office over to a private lawyer for a flat contract fee.
"No attorneys were interested," she said.
In Allegheny County, the ACLU sued in 1996 after the county commissioners cut the budget of the office.
The lawsuit was settled in 1998 and a plan calling for increased staffing and training still is being implemented. |