Lawsuit Seeks Better Legal Help for Poor Defendants

    April 2, 2007
    The Flint Journal
    By Ken Palmer

    GENESEE COUNTY -In one case, a Grand Blanc woman charged with soliciting murder claims she was left sitting in jail for five months with nary a word from her court-appointed attorney.

    In another, a Flint man accused of assault and home invasion claims his appointed counsel failed to prepare his defense and keep him informed about what was happening with his case.

    The two Genesee County cases are being cited in a lawsuit against the state and Gov. Jennifer Granholm as examples of how poor defendants aren't getting a fair shake in Michigan.

    The suit, brought by a coalition that includes the ACLU of Michigan, claims the state has failed to fix a public defender system that wastes money and deprives the indigent of adequate legal representation.

    The state needs to fund the public defender system and take steps to ensure that indigent defendants get proper legal help, it says.

    The local defendants are among eight plaintiffs listed in the civil rights complaint filed last month in Ingham County Circuit Court.

    "There's no question that the system is broken and that people are getting inadequate representation because caseloads are too large or (counties) don't have the money and resources," said Glenn Simmington, a Flint attorney who belongs to the local ACLU and the Michigan Coalition for Justice, which is spearheading the lawsuit.

    "We've just continued to sink further and further because none of the efforts to reform have gotten beyond good intentions."

    The suit was filed on behalf of eight people facing felony charges in Berrien, Genesee and Muskegon counties, although similar problems exist throughout the state, it claims.

    The public defender programs in those counties have no written performance standards, no workload standards and don't adequately train or monitor attorneys, the lawsuit claims.

    Public defenders can't properly represent their clients because they don't have the resources, the suit says.

    Genesee County officials said they agree with the goal of the lawsuit but called the assertions about the county's defender system off base.

    "I would disagree because I think we do a pretty darn good job of assigning lawyers and matching lawyers with the seriousness of cases," said Barbara Menear, the county's circuit court administrator, who runs the defender program.

    "I can't disagree with the goal, even it you get a little bruised along the way. The theory is that the state is not giving the locals any money for indigent criminal defense, and that's certainly true."

    The local lawyers who handled the cases are not named in the lawsuit, but both disputed the claims.

    Kraig Sippell, president of the Genesee County Bar Association, said he's doing all he can for Jennifer O'Sullivan, the Grand Blanc woman facing two counts each of murder solicitation and conspiracy to commit murder. The case involves an alleged plot to kill the fathers of her two children.

    Sippell said he might be the only local bar president in Michigan who does regular public defense work. He said he does such work because he believes in it, not because he has to.

    O'Sullivan's case has been delayed by forensic referrals for her and her co-defendant husband - an aspect he informed her about, Sippell said. He said he has made nine court appearances on the case and has kept his client informed.

    "She hasn't even had a preliminary exam yet, and she really hasn't been deprived of anything," he said. "I know she's not happy sitting over there (in the jail), but I can't do anything about that."

    The second case involves Jose Davila of Flint, who faced felony home-invasion and misdemeanor counts after an incident in which he was attacked by a group of people, including one armed with a baseball bat, in a relative's home.

    Burton attorney Michael Breczinski said he did a good job for Davila, who had prior felony convictions and originally faced a maximum 20-year felony.

    Davila has since pleaded no contest to trespassing and a reduced home invasion charge under an agreement that he get probation, court records say.

    "I'm in favor of the (ACLU) suit," Breczinski said. "I just don't think this was a good case for them to do."

    Simmington said he believes the two Genesee County cases cited in the suit were poor choices. He also said the county's method of appointing lawyers on a rotating basis is inherently better than the contract systems used in Berrien and Muskegon counties.

    The defender list includes about 100 lawyers who handle a total of about 2,000 felony cases a year.

    "I'm not suggesting they couldn't have found good plaintiffs here, but they found terrible plaintiffs," Simmington said.

    But that's partly the point of the lawsuit -- to equalize funding and make public defense more uniform, said Simmington, who sits on a task force that has pushed for legislative reform of the state's public defender system.

    The big question, he said, is where the money would come from.

    But a better public defender system would cut costs by reducing the recidivism and incarceration rates, making the reforms "very close to revenue neutral," he said.

    "It's about the system, not about the lawyers," he said. "It's not about the counties, it's about the state."



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