![]() Implementing it is another story, largely because of the patchwork of courts in Mississippi.Ĭriminal defendants may move through as many as three different court systems, each with its own system of public defense, as they go from arrest to a plea deal or verdict. Ordering that change now looks like the easy part. The new rule on indigent defense makes one key change: It says a lawyer may not withdraw from a case pending indictment until another has been appointed. “This structural change means nothing,” he said, “if local judges don’t create and implement new comprehensive plans for indigent defense.” Patchwork of Court Systems Handle Indigent Defense Johnson, who leads the Mississippi office of the MacArthur Justice Center, a civil rights law firm, said advocacy organizations like his will monitor courts for compliance with the new rule. Without a lawyer, defendants may have a hard time fighting their charges or striking plea deals. “Mississippi is among the worst of the worst on this issue,” Metzger said.Ĭliff Johnson, a lawyer who pushed for the revised indigent defense rule, has documented how those two factors-the lack of an indictment deadline and the lack of legal representation in the “dead zone”-can cause defendants to be jailed for months or years. Mississippi gives district attorneys unlimited time to indict someone after an arrest, and it’s among a handful of states where defendants can be jailed indefinitely as they await indictment, according to recent research by Pam Metzger, a legal scholar who runs the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law. Critics have dubbed the period between lawyers the “dead zone.” Only after the defendant is indicted, which often takes months, is another lawyer appointed. Under current rules, in many courts that lawyer handles just the initial appearance and, in some cases, an optional preliminary hearing when evidence is presented. A judge informs the defendant of the charges against them, sets the conditions for being released from jail, and appoints a lawyer if the defendant can’t afford one. He responded by developing a model process they could use.Īfter someone is arrested for a felony in Mississippi, that person has an initial appearance in court. He fears that if officials don’t come up with one, the court could be “hung out there waiting for a lawsuit to happen.”Īndré de Gruy, who runs Mississippi’s Office of State Public Defender and is recognized throughout the state as an expert on indigent defense, said just four of the state’s 23 circuit court districts have asked him for advice on how to comply with the new rule. “There’s really not a plan,” said Chuck Hopkins, a judge in a county-level justice court in northeast Mississippi’s Lee County. ![]() That reporting suggests that impoverished defendants in many Mississippi counties are likely to remain deprived of meaningful legal assistance as they wait, often in jail, for prosecutors to decide whether to pursue felony charges. Some officials suggested that their current practice of appointing lawyers only for limited purposes will fulfill the new requirement, even though those attorneys do little beyond attending early court hearings. Others have not decided how they will respond. But few of the state’s courts have plans in place to change their procedures in a way that is likely to accomplish what the justices intended.Ī survey of courts by the Daily Journal, ProPublica and The Marshall Project found that some local court officials are unaware of the new rule. The goal is to eliminate a gap during which no one is working on a defendant’s behalf. ![]() In April, the Mississippi Supreme Court changed the rules for state courts to require that poor criminal defendants have a lawyer throughout the sometimes lengthy period between arrest and indictment.
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