Court-appointed counsel.

The June 1 News article regarding SB 1088, which virtually eliminates private court-appointed attorneys from representing indigent citizens, contained several incomplete ideas and/or misconceptions. I do not fault the writer. Only those who have handled death penalty cases or who have had to deal with the Justice Administrative Commission as court-appointed counsel, know the right questions.

SB 1088's sponsor, Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, incredibly said, "It's a bill I didn't even like ... I disagree with it [philosophically] ... and I'm against growing government." He also said "lawmakers tried to work with the private bar ... but couldn't make ... [any options] fit within the budget constraints ... [because] the bottom line is what would have cost $100 million [with private conflict counsel] only costs $50 million [with the creation of another bureaucracy]. He also said "conflict counsel costs have grown in the past three years from $38 million to $98 million.... This has grown out of sight and we had to do something." Yes, the legislature should have "done something" in the beginning: adequately fund the Article V revision legislation.

When the state assumed responsibility from the counties to provide due process services to indigent citizens in 2004, the transition legislation was underfunded from the beginning and inadequate to manage the known volume of cases handled annually by court-appointed counsel. Politics 101 teaches that a bill doesn't function until it is given life through appropriations. In this case, not only were the funds inadequate for the 2004-2005 legislative year and couldn't even get the mandated programs off the ground, inexplicably, the legislature even cut the requested appropriations and left the program approximately $10-$12 million underfunded from the startup bare minimum that had been calculated just to get going. What the politicians won't admit is that they knew this from the beginning; moreover, they knew that the death penalty cases pending on July 1, 2004, would be coming in for payment and that each one of them would exceed the $3,500 caps. If an accountant or business manager committed that kind of malpractice advising you on your firm's account, you would be suing him right now.

Death Penalty 101 teaches the average time from indictment to trial in a death penalty case is between one to three years, and some take even longer. The legislature knew this and knew the number of all pending court-appointed cases--including death penalty cases--on July 1, 2004, because the chief judge of each circuit had required court-appointed attorneys to provide an inventory of their pending cases so the legislature could make the necessary monetary projections before the implementing legislation was funded. So, what happened? The inevitable. The pending death penalty cases were tried and the court-appointed attorneys submitted their invoices for payment, and virtually all of them were well above the $3,500 antiquated caps in the Article V revision legislation (another political fraud, folks, for your legislators to knowingly pass caps of $3,500 in a death penalty case where attorneys commonly spend 300-plus hours [does $11.66 per hour seem fair?]). In short, the legislature knew those cases would be coming in for payment periodically over the upcoming years for payment well beyond the statutory caps, but instead of preparing for them, they pulled a typical political stunt and cut the funding. Thus, death cases coupled with an increase in court-appointed cases were the most significant reasons why the initially underfunded program quickly slid down the shaft to the red ink. Both were very convenient reasons why Sen. Crist and pals made Article V a target for the inexorable public-pandering complaints of the fringe right, i.e., to unfairly blame private, appointed counsel for the "out of sight" costs. Voila, the solution: SB 1088. In short, the claim that private, court-appointed counsel were the reason for the soaring due process costs is a political hoax. Shocking, I know, and I hope you're sitting down. In fact, in my opinion, the Article V legislation was designed to be underfunded from the beginning to ensure its failure. Designed obsolescence, it was formerly called. This gave the professional politicians one more opportunity to pander to the public the travesty of court-appointed counsel representing undeserving indigent citizens, and SB 1088 was the vehicle to get appointed counsel out of the mix.

So who cares? Only those who know of the duplicity and who care about the resulting jeopardy that SB 1088 places on our indigent citizens' right to due process. The "tough on criminals" crowd, however, only care about getting in another lick on due process' tenuous hold on the rail of justice for our indigent citizens, and they are using the false claim of holding down costs to do it.

Mike Rollo

Pensacola