The Birmingham News sharply crit­i­cized Alabama’s sys­tem of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in death penal­ty cas­es, say­ing that the pub­lic should be out­raged. A lack of even min­i­mal resources and pay has caused attor­neys to with­draw from cas­es and to decline rep­re­sen­ta­tion to indi­gent defen­dants. The paper wrote that this short­age of attor­neys could result in more tri­al errors and longer appeals, putting an undue strain on vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and the entire sys­tem of jus­tice. The edi­to­r­i­al stat­ed:

What would it be worth to you to have a good lawyer if you were charged with a heinous crime and were fac­ing the death penal­ty? Would any amount be too much? Probably not.

But few of us can afford a mon­ey-is-no-object defense. As tax­pay­ers, there’s a lim­it, too, in what we can afford to spend col­lec­tive­ly for court-appoint­ed lawyers who rep­re­sent poor peo­ple in crim­i­nal cas­es.

Even so, what’s hap­pen­ing in Alabama is ridicu­lous.

Lawyers who rep­re­sent poor defen­dants are paid the low­ly sum of $40 an hour for out-of-court work and $60 an hour for in-court work. That’s a frac­tion of what lawyers earn when defen­dants hire them. But until recent­ly, the court-appoint­ed lawyers were at least able to sup­ple­ment the indi­gent rates by get­ting pay­ments (on aver­age, $29 an hour) to cov­er over­head expens­es such as rent, insur­ance and office staff.

The over­head pay end­ed in February when Attorney General Troy King issued an opin­ion say­ing state law banned the prac­tice.

Criminal defense lawyers warned that cut in pay would dry up the pool of those will­ing to take court-appoint­ed cas­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pli­cat­ed ones like those involv­ing the death penal­ty. The warn­ings have been, unfor­tu­nate­ly, borne out.

Lawyers across the state have with­drawn from cap­i­tal cas­es. Among them was William Pfeifer, who had rep­re­sent­ed one of the defen­dants in a rob­bery-mur­der case in Mobile that cap­tured more atten­tion than most; the vic­tim was alleged­ly killed for being a homo­sex­u­al.

​“Counsel is not finan­cial­ly able to sub­si­dize the state of Alabama in its efforts to exe­cute per­sons charged with cap­i­tal offens­es, nor as a mat­ter of con­science is he will­ing to do so,” Pfeifer wrote in his motion with­draw­ing from the case.

Concerned, the Senate passed a mea­sure this sum­mer to restore the over­head pay. But the leg­is­la­tion did­n’t have enough sup­port in the House of Representatives to come up for a vote, thanks, in part, to oppo­si­tion from the Christian Coalition of Alabama. ​“In our view, it was not good stew­ard­ship at the time,” said the coali­tion’s pres­i­dent, John Giles.

And here we thought the Christian Coalition was against gam­bling. While the group oppos­es gam­bling with mon­ey, it appar­ent­ly does­n’t mind gam­bling with the lives of poor defen­dants — at least not enough to let the state spend as much as $28 mil­lion over 2 years to pay indi­gent lawyers a decent wage.

People in Alabama ought to be out­raged. If they can’t work up a tear for the defense lawyers or the poor defen­dants, Alabamians should at least be con­cerned for them­selves and for vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. Paying for a sec­ond-rate defense may seem like a good idea, but it ends up cost­ing more over the long haul, with retri­als that drain more resources and place an undue strain on the fam­i­lies of vic­tims and defen­dants alike. In addi­tion, a short­age of lawyers in these cas­es will only make the wheels of jus­tice grind more slow­ly.

It’s not only wrong for Alabama to short­change indi­gent defen­dants; it’s dumb. The over­head pay needs to be restored. The soon­er, the bet­ter.

(Birmingham News, August 17, 2005). See Representation and Costs.

Citation Guide