Budget cuts put justice on hold.

Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-Guard

Jason Keith Harmon sits in the Lane County Jail in a peculiar limbo.

He's wanted in California on a fugitive warrant, but he can't leave Oregon until drug possession charges against him here are resolved.

That can't happen until he's arraigned, and his arraignment has been postponed twice because the state has no money to pay for his defense lawyer.

Lane County Circuit Court judges, lawyers and defendants are all wrestling with bizarre problems brought on by the state's cash crunch.

And many are showing the wear after a month under state-ordered cutbacks.

Courts are closed on Fridays and Circuit Court judges have stopped appointing attorneys to defend indigent people on minor felonies and misdemeanors.

In March, defendants were told to come back later for their arraignments - the court appearance where they hear the charges against them, ask for a lawyer and sometimes enter a plea.

In other counties, "later" means after July 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year.

But here, it meant in April as Lane County judges banked on the state coming up with a funding solution.

But no money and no solution materialized.

Instead, defendants, whose cases had already been postponed once, showed up last week for arraignment before Circuit Judge Karsten Rasmussen and got this message: The state is still broke - come back in another month.

Harmon, cooling his heels in the Lane County Jail, told the judge that he'd consider pleading guilty to the local drug charges, so he could go to California to deal with the charges there.

"My time here is dead time," Harmon said. It won't count as time served in California.

Rasmussen said he would arraign Harmon if he agreed to waive his right to a lawyer, but Harmon wasn't willing to take that step.

In another case, a defense attorney asked the judge if he should stay abreast of new charges against a client, charges on the "do not appoint a lawyer" list.

"I don't think anyone in the state of Oregon knows the answer to that question," Rasmussen replied.

The friction was palpable later in the day when David Scott Lay, an inmate already serving time in the Snake River Correctional Institution in Eastern Oregon, told Circuit Judge Eveleen Henry that he wanted to waive his right to an attorney and plead guilty to theft charges.

Henry didn't want to defer his arraignment to May, forcing the state to have to bring him back again, but she was reluctant to let him proceed without legal advice.

Henry asked public defender Marie Desmond to speak with Lay even though the charges - second-degree burglary and third-degree theft - fell under the minor crimes that no longer get public defenders until the new budget year begins.

But Desmond balked. "I will not speak with him," she said.

Henry asked Desmond once again: "Let the chips fall where they may," the judge said.

But Desmond replied: "I won't do it unless you can guarantee that my office will be paid."

At that impasse, Henry reviewed a letter the defendant had written indicating he was willing to waive his right to an attorney and plead guilty to two of the three charges against him for a six-month concurrent sentence.

The judge decided to let Lay represent himself.

Afterward, the public defender said she felt bad about refusing to consult on the case.

"Talking with defendants is what I do, and I want to do it," Desmond said.

But staff in the public defender's office have already taken a 20 percent pay cut and a month off without pay, she said.

There's a lot of pressure to work for free and that's not right either, she said.

In a telephone interview from the jail, Lay said he knew he'd have to be prepared because he'd heard that the state wasn't appointing defense attorneys for some crimes.

"I had to make a plea agreement acting as my own attorney, knowing that I would be denied counsel," he said.

Defendants are now supposed to come back in May, when the county's judges still hold out hope for a solution.

The case backlog, in the meantime, continues to grow by about 90 a week, prosecutors estimate.

Judges want legislators in Salem to restore money for indigent defense or the district attorney's office to find creative ways to deal with the cases, perhaps reducing some misdemeanors to violations that only carry fines, for example.

But Chief Deputy District Attorney Kent Mortimore said those options only work when defendants have a lawyer.

"We're not in a position to make offers or do anything other than sit back and watch," Mortimore said.

And legislators have moved beyond the current budget to deal with the looming problems of the 2003-05 budget.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski plans to convene a meeting of district attorneys from around the state to discuss state money problems, said spokeswoman Mary Ellen Glynn.

But that meeting hasn't been scheduled yet and is likely to focus on the next fiscal year, she said.

Meanwhile, people will continue returning to court for arraignments only to learn that there's still no money and no lawyers for them.

"We're talking about the breakage of the criminal justice system," Judge Rasmussen said. "The system is breaking."