fbpx

OPD Protects All of Us

Same topic, different views

By Tim Baldwin and Joe Carbonari

By Tim Baldwin

One of the government’s primary responsibilities (mandated in our constitutions) is to provide effective defense counsel for indigents accused of committing a crime. Do Montana state legislators care about this?

After years of study in the 1970s, the National Center for Defense Management found that Montana attorneys appointed by local judges to represent indigents in criminal cases created a “substandard system of indigent criminal justice.” Flathead County was a focus county. In 2002 the ACLU filed a lawsuit to redress this problem. Consequently, Montana’s Legislature created an independent Office of State Public Defender (OPD).

Since OPD’s creation in 2005, some state legislators have treated OPD as a neglected stepchild and attempted to defund it. They take pride in funding prosecutors but see little importance to endure poor citizens have a competent defense. Recently, a longtime attorney for the City of Kalispell, joined such legislators and wrote a letter to the OPD Task Force (charged with overseeing OPD) about how OPD “wastes taxes” filing defense motions against the city.

Contrary to what some prosecutors and politicians think, challenging prosecutors and police is a good defense attorney’s job. Truly, everyone’s rights are protected because OPD fights vigorously. Our Founding Father saw this and made it an expressed constitutional right. Politicians and prosecutors today who would defund OPD should rethink their unconstitutional philosophy.


 

By Joe Carbonari

Our personal freedom can go before a judge. We have the right to defend ourselves. To make that right meaningful the ability to secure legal help is indispensable. For those lacking means, public defenders are provided. We taxpayers foot the bill. The Office of the State Public Defender handles the logistics.

Unfortunately, there are more cases needing assistance than there are attorneys, or staff, to do the job as well as might be desired. It gets rushed; investigation and preparation times get shorter and quality suffers.

How much justice are we willing to pay for? How good, how thorough a defense, are we obligated, by decency or by the law, to provide? I suspect that it ought to be at least somewhat more than is currently the case.

If our public defenders, and the system overall, are overworked and underappreciated, justice will suffer. Public defenders, prosecutors and judges will all be tempted to choose pragmatism over justice. Plea bargains will abound. We will cope. It’s what we do.

No doubt there are many aspects of our criminal system that could be improved through simple efficiencies. None of us are perfect every day in every way. I doubt, however, that efficiency alone is the answer. Both more people and more funds are probably needed. Certainly our attention is required.

How much justice is enough? How much are we willing to pay?