Fifty years after the landmark Gideon case established the right to counsel for all people accused of crimes, a recent ACLU-WA victory is breaking new ground for fairness in the criminal justice system. The ruling in Wilbur v. Mt. Vernon and Burlington garnered national attention and has put the spotlight on the need for reform in our state and elsewhere.
In December 2013 the U.S. District Court in Seattle found in Wilbur that the public defense system of the two cities deprived indigent persons facing misdemeanor criminal charges of their right to assistance of counsel. Judge Robert Lasnik found that the cities’ public defenders had excessively high caseloads, rarely provided an opportunity for the accused to confer with them in a confidential setting, and rarely engaged in investigations or researched possible legal defenses.
In sum, the court concluded that the defense services amounted to little more than a “meet and plead” system. As Judge Lasnik wrote, “the system is broken to such an extent that “the individual defendant is not represented in any meaningful way, and actual innocence could conceivably go unnoticed and unchampioned.”
“The case has shown that cities need to commit themselves to adequate resources for public defense. Simply providing an attorney is not enough,” said ACLU-WA legal director Sarah Dunne.
The case has made a big impact in several ways:
- The ruling provides a dramatic example of the potential expense of failing to provide a constitutional public defense system. The court ordered the defendants to pay more than $2,160,000 in attorneys’ fees and $75,000 in costs. Citing the quality of work done by the plaintiffs’ legal team, the court noted, “Class counsels’ written advocacy throughout the litigation was superb.”
- The case is one of the few challenges to an indigent defense system to be litigated in federal court, and the only one (of which we are aware) to result in a favorable ruling on the merits in federal court following a trial. The ruling sends a message that any jurisdiction not operating a constitutional public defense system needs to fix it.
- The ruling reinforces the importance of Washington State Bar Association caseload standards, under which the maximum for public defenders should be 400 misdemeanor cases a year. When the suit was filed in 2011, the cities employed two part-time attorneys to represent indigents in more than 2000 cases. In response to the litigation, a new group of attorneys took over the public defense contract, but each was still responsible for over 650 cases a year.
- The extent of injunctive relief ordered by the court is extensive. It marks the first time a federal court has appointed a supervisor to oversee a public defense system. And the court is keeping jurisdiction over the case for three years while reforms proceed.
- The U.S. Department of Justice took an unprecedented step by filing a statement of interest in the case. In doing so, it reaffirmed a federal interest in ensuring the mandate of Gideon is met and effectively endorsed caseload limits for public defenders.
- U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder cited the case in an op-ed he wrote for the Washington Post on the need to strengthen public defender systems nationwide.
- Recognizing the case’s significance, National Public Radio, the American Bar Association Journal, and the New York Times (“The Right to an Attorney Who Actually Does His Job”) reported on the ruling, and a Times columnist discussed its historic importance.
To remedy the problems, the court ordered the cities to hire a supervisor to ensure their defense system complies with constitutional standards. Eileen Farley, a well-respected veteran of the public defense system in King County, has been selected as the supervisor. The cities are required to collect data on us of investigators and expert witnesses, the number of trials, and the number of pleas to a lesser charge. Further, the cities must provide plaintiffs’ counsel with 50 randomly selected case files a year for their review.
