Judge rejects settlement aimed at ensuring lawyers for low-income defendants

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — A judge has rejected a second proposed settlement for improving Maine’s system for providing attorneys for residents who cannot afford them, and she won’t be waiting for a third try.

Justice Michaela Murphy gave the ACLU of Maine until March 8 to file a new civil complaint to include new claims as part of a two-step process. The first phase would focus on helping defendants who are currently without lawyers, while a second phase will focus on systemic changes needed to meet obligations going forward in future years.

In her decision, dated Tuesday, Murphy chided the parties for presenting her with another settlement proposal that didn’t guarantee attorneys to 393 indigent clients who currently lack them. Of those, about 100 are currently in custody in jails across the state.

“The parties in this class action are back before the court asking it to approve a proposed settlement that does not in any enforceable way require the defendants to address their fundamental obligation under Maine law: to provide qualified attorneys to represent indigent defendants consistent with federal and state constitutional and statutory obligations, and to ’develop and maintain a system’ of attorneys capable of fulfilling this function,” the judge wrote.

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The ACLU of Maine brought the class-action lawsuit in March 2022 over shortcomings of the state’s public defender system, contending the state was failing to provide low-income Maine residents with their constitutional right to effective counsel.

And the problem has worsened since then with a growing backlog because there are too few qualified attorneys available to represent people who cannot afford an attorney.

“Maine is in the midst of a constitutional crisis of denying people the right to counsel and the right to effective assistance of counsel. A person’s liberty and experience in the legal system should never depend on their wealth,” Carol Garvan, ACLU of Maine legal director, said Wednesday in a statement.

Maine was the only state without a public defender’s office for people who cannot afford to hire a lawyer before the hiring of five public defenders in 2022. Before that, the state had relied solely on private attorneys who were reimbursed by the state to handle such cases, and a crisis emerged when the number of lawyers willing to take court-appointed cases began declining.

All states are required to provide an attorney to criminal defendants who are unable to afford their own lawyer. A scathing report in 2019 outlined significant shortcomings in Maine’s system, including lax oversight of the billing practices by the private attorneys.