The fate of a pilot program to provide public defenders in rural counties — called “a model for the nation” — is now in the hands of a legislative conference committee.
The Mississippi Senate has approved an amended version of House Bill 1930 that includes second-year funding for the three-year pilot program that provides resources for rural counties that lack a robust public defender program. On Wednesday, the House declined to concur on the changes and invited conference.
Wednesday also marked the 63rd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that established the right to counsel for people charged with serious crimes who can’t afford a lawyer.
That 1963 case involved Clarence Gideon, who was convicted after he was forced to represent himself in court. As a result of the ruling, he received a new trial, this time with a court-appointed lawyer. He was acquitted.
The pilot program is taking place in Mississippi’s Fifth Circuit Court District. In Attala, Winston, Montgomery and Grenada counties, these new public defenders are tackling a third of the felony cases. In Carroll, Choctaw and Webster counties, the new defenders are handling cases where conflicts arise.
If the pilot program works, it could be expanded to rural counties across the state. “This is a new program,” State Public Defender André de Gruy said. “We’ve never done anything like this at the local level. Not every county is big enough for a public defender, so this is designed for the 67 counties that are less than 50,000 in population.”
He said the year two request in the original bill is $838,000 to fully fund four lawyers, an investigator and two support staff members. The Senate’s recommendation is to provide $778,677 in funding.
Pamela Metzger, executive director for the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at Southern Methodist University’s law school, called the program “a model for the nation.”
Metzger, whose center collaborated with de Gruy to design the project, called the pilot program “a cut above” what she’s seen in other states. “The pilot office lawyers are working seven days a week to provide Day One representation in seven counties,” she said.
What makes the program different, she said, is these lawyers are getting involved in cases within 24 hours of an arrest and staying involved, “providing continuous representation rather than stop-start representation — a problem in Mississippi and other states.”
In its first five months, Mississippi’s pilot program has represented 84 clients facing felony charges. Because the public defenders became involved early in their clients’ cases, 31 of the case arrests were resolved without a felony conviction, Metzger said.
In another case, the judge originally set a $1 million bond, but after a preliminary hearing, the judge concluded the prosecution’s case was “very, very weak” and reduced the bond to $50,000, she said.
Such legal help creates a “smaller, smarter and fairer system of justice,” she said. “The quality of justice improves.”
The public defenders have also helped 16 clients obtain substance use and mental health treatment.
Only a handful of Mississippi counties currently have a full-time public defender’s office. In counties where boards of supervisors don’t establish a public defender office, the maximum amount an attorney can be paid for a single felony case is $3,000, plus expenses.
The Public Defender Task Force concluded in 2018 that Mississippi “has no permanent institutionalized oversight mechanism to ensure that its constitutional obligation to provide effective counsel to the indigent accused is met in noncapital cases in many of its trial courts.”
According to a 2018 report by the Sixth Amendment Center, Mississippi is the only state in the Southeast that doesn’t have either a statewide public defender system like Arkansas or state oversight like Louisiana. As far as de Gruy said he knows, that is still true.
The report also noted that lawyers hired as public defenders “consistently carry excessive caseloads that prevent the rendering of effective representation.”
Metzger said the pilot program’s success is enabling existing public defenders, who have been overburdened by caseloads, to do their jobs even better.
The Deason Center is gathering data on the pilot program so that lawmakers and others can see how well it works, she said. “Nothing I’ve done in the past has made me more proud than to be associated with the pilot program now going on in Mississippi.”
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