Judge Vows to Free 42 Suspects


    March 31, 2007
    The Times Picayune
    By Gwen Filosa

    The Louisiana Legislature has allowed the public defender system in Orleans Parish to remain a "legal hell" that has reached disastrous proportions, a local judge ruled Friday as he vowed to no longer allow the program to represent poor defendants in his court.

    Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Arthur Hunter said that next month he will release 42 poor defendants who remain in custody, and he suggested the public defender program should dump cases rather than continue working on them while it has only a skeleton staff, a staggering caseload and a pitiful budget.

    Hunter, a former police officer elected to the bench in 1996, blamed lawmakers for the failures of the public defender system and pointed out that the crisis plaguing poor defendants and their court-appointed attorneys has existed for 25 years.

    "Hurricane Katrina is no longer an excuse, and the state has a budget surplus," Hunter said, adding from the bench Friday that the poorest defendants in New Orleans receive the worst legal services as they face prison time and permanent criminal records.
    "Indigent defense in New Orleans is unbelievable, unconstitutional, totally lacking the basic professional standards of legal representation, and a mockery of what a criminal justice system should be in a Western civilized nation," Hunter said. "The Louisiana Legislature has allowed this legal hell to exist, fester and finally boil over. . . . This court must take certain measures to protect the statutory and constitutional rights of indigent defendants."

    During this year's session, which will start April 30, the Legislature will consider plans to restructure how public defender programs operate across the state.

    Post-Katrina problems

    Hunter's ruling won't be final until April 18, when he has scheduled a hearing where the district attorney's office and public defender program are expected to present additional testimony and information. But it is the strongest ruling to emerge since the architects of a post-Katrina public defender program have fought to provide adequate representation to the city's poor.

    Friday's ruling came after months of hearings and motions filed by the public defender program seeking to find its footing after it went broke after Katrina and lost almost its entire staff.

    District Attorney Eddie Jordan's office said it plans to appeal Hunter's ruling, maintaining its argument that the courts should appoint lawyers instead of freeing pretrial defendants. Both Hunter and the public defender program leaders say there is not enough money to contract out every case to private attorneys.

    In October, Hunter released four people awaiting trial on misdemeanor charges, and he warned then that because the Constitution does not distinguish between felony and misdemeanor charges when it comes to the right to representation, more would follow.

    The 42 defendants on Hunter's list of possible releases from jail are largely facing narcotics charges, although at least two are accused of armed robbery and one of sexual battery. The public defender's office has said all of the cases involve defendants who are receiving little if any representation in court due to the strapped system.

    Long waits in jail

    Defense attorneys have said many poor defendants are so desperate to get out of jail after long stretches of waiting for their cases to move forward that they will often plead guilty just to be done with their legal troubles, waiving their rights to fight the charges in court.

    In Hunter's Section K of Criminal District Court, the only section in which he may rule upon cases, the public defender is unable to effectively serve each of his clients in the 167 cases on his plate, Hunter ruled.

    Steve Singer, chief of trials for the public defender program, said $2.1 million would suffice to properly staff a post-Katrina office. That is about one-third more than the office currently has, Singer said.

    To date, the public defender program has 26 full-time attorneys working at Criminal District Court and a caseload that stands at about 2,520 felony cases. The juvenile court in Orleans Parish has six public defenders assigned to the six sections of court.

    Christine Lehmann, an attorney for the public defender program who filed the motion Hunter ruled on Friday, said that for decades Criminal District Court has valued "speed over accuracy" and left the poor to navigate the system at their peril.

    "It shouldn't be analogous to a shoe factory, but to a hospital," Lehmann said after the ruling. "These are people's lives."

    Hunter said his ruling applies to the statewide public defense system, which the Legislature has known is failing since 1972.

    Starting over

    Singer and his colleagues are re-creating the public defender system, which kept no records before Katrina and allowed its lawyers to moonlight in private practice while representing the poor daily in Orleans Parish.

    Defendants have been paying the price for a shoddy system for decades, Singer said.

    One case Hunter mentioned in his ruling is that of Michael Monroe, 40, a New Orleans man whose beleaguered public defender in 1997 had him stand trial for simple burglary, believing he would face a maximum of seven years if convicted.

    Police arrested Monroe on March 20, 1997, at about 2:30 a.m. outside the Pie in the Sky Restaurant on Magazine Street, after finding him climbing out of a window carrying a crowbar in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

    "I want to go to jail," he reportedly told officers. But at trial, Monroe testified that he was only passing by the business from his mother's house to his sister's home when officers arrested him.

    The owner discovered battered doors and water coolers moved about, but nothing was taken, according to the appeals court record.

    Monroe lost at trial, then learned he had lost his freedom for good: Hunter had to sentence him to a mandatory term of life without parole, since he had two prior convictions -- burglary and dealing drugs -- making him a three-time felon under Louisiana's repeat offender law. Monroe has no convictions for violent crime in Orleans Parish.

    Powell Miller, a veteran public defender assigned to Hunter's courtroom, said he relied on prosecutors' word that Monroe was looking at seven years. The 4th Circuit Court of Appeal and then the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the life term.

    Miller said he was overworked and under time pressure at the time, and forced to rely on prosecutors for research on his client's record.

    The Legislature changed the law after Monroe's case, but decided it would not be applied to past cases. Monroe remains at the State Penitentiary.



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