- Iowa’s costs for defending poor rise, By Vanessa Miller, June 28, 2012, Cedar Rapids Gazette: “Just a handful of basic questions stand between accused criminals claiming to be indigent and trained attorneys willing to fight for them in court. Do you have a job? How much do you earn? How much are your monthly bills? Most of the time, according to legal experts and court officials, accused offenders applying for court-appointed attorneys answer truthfully – they are signing the paperwork under penalty of perjury after all. But, according to officials within the state’s judicial system, there is no systematic procedure in place to verify that recipients of court-appointed counsel are being honest about their finances. That means some of the accused could be taking advantage of an indigent defense system that is largely supported by taxpayers and already spread thin, with the gap between what is spent on public defense and what is paid back by accused offenders widening…”
- Poor people aren’t getting equal shake in court, governor’s panel warns, By Pat Shellenbarger, June 26, 2012, MLive.com: “Fridays in Ottawa County’s courts — when criminal defendants often are arraigned without legal representation — are referred to as ‘McJustice Days.’ In Sault Ste. Marie, attorneys representing the poor have little time to prepare and wait in line to meet with their clients in the courthouse’s unisex bathroom. In Wayne County, court-appointed attorneys haven’t received a raise in decades and say they often take on more cases than they can handle. And in a report approved June 22, the Michigan Advisory Commission on Indigent Defense urged the Legislature and Gov. Rick Snyder to increase funding and implement statewide standards for the state’s system of providing attorneys for indigent criminal defendants — a system that has been criticized as one of the worst in the country…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty