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Quitman County Lawsuit
In 2001, Quitman County sued the State of Mississippi alleging that Mississippi’s statutes requiring the counties to provide legal services for indigent criminal defendants were unconstitutional and that the state should bear the burden of providing effective assistance of counsel to indigent defendants within the state. After a bench trial, the trial court ruled in November 2003, that the county had not met its burden of showing that the absence of state funding led to systemic ineffective assistance. In so ruling, the court held that the county had the burden of showing ineffectiveness beyond a reasonable doubt by showing, on a case-by-case basis, the omissions or actions of counsel that constituted ineffective assistance and showing that, under the circumstances, these acts or omissions fell below the objective standard of reasonableness. This test, established in Strickland v. Washington, governs ineffective assistance claims raised by defendants during post-conviction review. The court held that the county failed to meet its burden under the Strickland test because they did not present evidence of any Quitman County cases being overturned on ineffective assistance grounds.
The county appealed to the Mississippi Supreme Court contending that the trial court was erred in applying the Strickland standard and that, in a systemic case, the county should have met its burden simply by showing that the system fails to provide the tools of an adequate defense. The Mississippi Supreme Court disagreed and upheld the trial court’s decision.
Two justices filed a vigorous dissent noting that the use of the Strickland standard was inappropriate outside of the post-conviction context, noting that the “distinction between the standards applicable to post-conviction proceedings and to systemic challenges rests on the very different policies applicable in the two kinds of cases. . . The concerns about certainty and finality of past criminal convictions do not arise in systemic cases.”
The dissent concludes that the appropriate standard in systemic cases is “whether the system provides the essential tools of an effective defense across the broad run of cases,” and that, in making this determination, the court should “look to objective criteria promulgated by the American Bar Association and other standard-setting bodies.” The dissent asserts that the case should have been remanded for the trial court to consider whether the Quitman County indigent defense system provided an adequate defense as measured by these standards.
“We are very disappointed in the ruling,” said Miriam Gohara of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, which participated in the suit as an amicus curiae. “But it is important to note that the Supreme Court left open the possibility that a county’s system could deficient, if county could make the appropriate showing.”
Supreme Court Documents
Amicus Brief by LDF
Amicus Brief by NACDL
Supreme Court decision
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National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL)
1660 L St., NW, 12th Floor, Washington, DC 20036
(202) 872-8600 • Fax (202) 872-8690 •
assist@nacdl.org
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