New York’s Public Defense Crisis is News Nationwide

Kimberly Hurrell-Harring “tumbled headlong into the Alice-in-Wonderland chaos of court-appointed lawyers, where even those lawyers say there is little time for clients.” This example of the crisis in New York State's public defense system leads an AP press story carried in the Seattle Times on June 3, 2009. Read the full story here. Hurrell-Harring is a plaintiff in a pending New York Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against New York State and five counties.

As the AP story was hitting the press on the west coast, final preparations were underway in Washington for a Congressional hearing on “Indigent Representation: A Growing National Crisis” being convened by the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security on June 4. Those proceedings, scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m., will be available online. While not state specific, witnesses may well refer to the ongoing crisis of New York’s public defense system.

At a prior Congressional hearing titled “Representation of Indigent Defendants in Criminal Cases: A Constitutional Crisis in Michigan and Other States?” David Carroll of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association provided written testimony that referred to the findings in 2006 by former Chief Judge Judith Kaye’s commission. The recommendations of that commission remain the core of reform efforts, as is set out on the website of the Campaign for an Independent Public Defense Commission.

All testimony from the earlier Congressional hearing is available on the website of the Michigan Campaign for Justice, a group that seeks implementation of a statewide public defense system headed by an independent public defense commission.