La. House Votes to Overhaul Louisiana's Indigent Defender System

    May 16, 2007
    Associated Press
    By Doug Simpson

    BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana needs to overhaul its system of legal defense for poor people in the courtroom, the House voted on Wednesday, after years of criticism that the current system is unfair and unconstitutional.

    The House voted 99-1 to approve a bill by Rep. Danny Martiny that would create a new state board to take responsibility from the state's local indigent defender offices, which are now overseen by 41 local boards around the state.

    Critics have complained from a variety of fronts about the current system, saying that the offices operate independently, with little oversight or record-keeping. The state Supreme Court has repeatedly criticized the Legislature for failing to correct the problem.

    Martiny, chair of the House Criminal Justice Committee, sponsored the bill after years of study and cooperation with public defenders, district attorneys and others involved in criminal courts.

    "I think this legislation goes a long way to improve not only the effectiveness but the efficiency and the accountability in this system," said Rep. Joe Toomy, R-Gretna.

    The measure would create the Louisiana Public Defender Board, four of whose 15 members would be legal experts from the law schools at LSU, Loyola, Southern and Tulane universities. Some members will be picked by the governor, others by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the House speaker, Senate president, president of the Louisiana Bar Association and other groups.

    "We're trying to put together a model public defender program," said Martiny, R-Kenner.

    House passage of Martiny's bill represents some recognition from lawmakers that the Louisiana Supreme Court was correct when it has attacked the Legislature for not fixing the way the state provides lawyers to indigent defendants. In a 2005 ruling, the high court said the state Constitution "explicitly places the duty of providing a working system for securing the representation of indigent defendants squarely on the shoulders of the Legislature. ... The Legislature may be in breach of that duty."

    Martiny said the new board would be designed to recognize that different parts of the state have different problems and that the public defender system works reasonably well in some areas.

    "The crime situation in New Orleans is vastly different than that, perhaps in Columbia," a small town in north Louisiana, Martiny said.

    The spike in violent crime in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, however, brought urgency to the issue. Martiny noted that one state district judge in the city has repeatedly threatened to release defendants accused of violent crime unless they are provided better legal representation in his court.

    Martiny's bill now moves to the Senate.



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