It won't fix itself

The Missouri State Public Defenders office is back in the news with a Missouri State Supreme Court opinion handed down earlier this week. In a nutshell, the decision gives the public defender commission the authority to manage caseload, but says the manner in which they had been managing it has been improper. When I wrote the three part series on this subject last month, I mentioned the court case, but I fully expected the court's decision to take months and a follow up story to be delayed until spring or later. But here I am again pouring over pages and pages of information, the court's opinion is 35 pages long, to try and make sense of a subject that seems to be baffling most folks. It seems glaringly obvious to me, but I have the benefit of having done research on it before.

Thirteen years ago, I was diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer and given six months to live. The first thing I did was gather all of the information on the subject I could find and educate myself. I studied every facet of the ailment and investigated every cure. I saw no bit of information as unimportant. I used the information I gathered to make a choice, a glaringly obvious choice, and finally won out in a hopeless situation. I have done the same kind of research with this story.

The predicament of the MSPD seems almost hopeless. Everyone knows that a significant increase in funding is needed to change the situation, but no one seems willing to step up and make that happen. I heard the term "political courage" in one interview, and I think that is the antibody needed to combat the malignancy infecting our criminal justice system. Someone in the legislative branch of our state government is going to have to stand up for the rights of the citizens and insist that money be appropriated to put this system back in proper health.

Make no mistake about it, the people we are talking about are citizens! They deserve to be treated as such. Just because they are charged with a crime and indigent doesn't mean they don't deserve the fair and equal treatment that is afforded to all under the constitution! If something like this were happening to our veterans, if they weren't being treated fairly, there would be a public outcry.

Well, many of these folks are veterans. Public defenders represent many segments of society, but due to heavy caseloads they can't provide the level of service each citizen deserves and is guaranteed to them by the state and federal constitutions, because the system is, and has been for several years, woefully underfunded.

I don't think a change in funding is going to come from the governor's office or administration any time soon. Governor Nixon is so intent on balancing the budget, as mandated by the constitution, that he passed up a chance to give $2 million worth of stimulus money to the public defender system. Instead, he cut the amount to one quarter of that and his spokesman basically told me the MSPD should be glad they got anything. The spokesman didn't say where the rest of the stimulus money was going. I guess the governor's administration figures it's kind of like the way some folks think of a malfunctioning car; if you just keep driving it, it will fix itself!

As noted in the previous series on this topic, this is a very complex subject that is complicated by more ins and outs and rules and regulations "than Carter's has pills." The high court's decision is akin to treating the symptoms of case overload rather than the disease of underfunding and seems to be following the medical profession's model, but given the fact that the state Supreme Court does not have the authority to appropriate the funding needed to aid the system, the bandage the court has placed on the gaping wound of the MSPD system may slow the progression of a chronic problem.

Right now, at a time when much national, state and local discussion in the coffee shops and around the office water cooler is focused on the national health care debate, not nearly enough attention has been given to the soundness of the public defender system right here in the state of Missouri. There is something else to consider about a chronic malady like the one facing the MSPD office; like all chronic conditions, it is progressive and can eventually be fatal. What happens then, when the system, as anticipated by many, can no longer function? Who will see that the rights of every citizen to legal representation is upheld? It's time the legislature funded a cure for this problem.