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A new state agency is planned in Florida that would replace the present system of court-appointed lawyers working for poor defendants who cannot be represented by a county public defender. It's likely to produce a diminished quality of representation for criminal defendants, say the agency's critics.

Trying to Save Money
The agency, to be called the Offices of Criminal Conflict and Civil Regional Counsel, is intended to replace a system whose costs have spiraled upwards in recent years. The state was expected to pay $100 million this year for court-appointed attorneys. The budget for the new agency is half that sum.

In the present system, a judge will appoint a private attorney when the Public Defender's Office cannot represent an indigent defendant. For example, in some cases, the public defender must opt out of a case — when there are multiple defendants, or when the public defender has represented the victim in the present case or in the past. A court-appointed lawyer will then represent the defendant, and that lawyer is paid by the state.

Inexperienced Attorneys
Experienced defense attorneys are often the court's first choice for complex or difficult cases. The new agency will be made up of mostly inexperienced young attorneys, according to State Sen. Victor Crist, the agency's primary champion. He said that 90% of the work handled by these lawyers will be simple cases that don't require "a high-end, experienced, big-gun lawyer."

Huge Caseloads
Additional concerns have been raised about the caseload handled by the new agency's attorneys. The agency will be divided into five offices across the state, with the attorneys in each office expected to cover a number of counties. The office serving Northeast Florida, for example, will encompass 32 counties.

Even Florida Gov. Charlie Crist has expressed his reservations about the agency, saying in a June 19 letter that he was concerned about the "radical replacement" of court-appointed private lawyers with 384 new state employees, and about whether the Northeast Florida office would be able to handle 32 counties. The new offices are scheduled to open in October 2007.

(Source: The Florida Times-Union)

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