Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda

Pennsylvania is the only state failing to provide counties with funds to provide constitutionally mandated indigent defense.  As the Supreme Court of the United States recognized in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), a defendant too poor to hire an attorney cannot stand equal before the law without counsel to ensure a fair trial. Gideon and subsequent cases have unequivocally placed the responsibility to provide indigent criminal defense with each state. In 2016, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recognized this constitutional deficiency in Kuren v. Luzerne County and decided that criminal defendants may sue counties for insufficiently funding public defender offices. 
 
In 2003, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias reported that the Commonwealth was not fulfilling its obligation to provide adequate, independent defense counsel to indigent defendants. In December of 2011, the Joint State Government Commission issued a report similarly concluding that Pennsylvania was not meeting its constitutional mandates under Gideon, proposing a statewide agency to oversee indigent criminal defense services. 
 
We are proposing legislation to establish the Indigent Defense Advisory Committee within the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD).  Composed of members of the criminal defense bar, judges, and general assembly appointments, the committee would propose and submit to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court minimum standards for the delivery of indigent defense services, as well as training and experience standards for indigent defense attorneys to include: 

 

• Establishing a virtual defender training library of identified statewide continuing legal education courses, practical training programs, skill development resources, capital case defense training, criminal defense training, juvenile defense training, and management and leadership training. 
• Adopting standards for collecting and reporting data related to the indigent criminal defense services in each county, including public defender caseloads/workloads, conflict counsel caseloads/workloads, and county spending on indigent criminal defense services. 
• Adopting standards for the use of case management systems by county public defender offices. 
• Developing, in partnership with the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, a data request to better understand the number and status of cases involving indigent defendants. 
• Partnering with other departments or agencies for the collection of data related to the delivery of indigent defense services. 
• Analyzing data trends and the effectiveness of indigent defense services in the Commonwealth. 

The Indigent Defense Grant Program, administered by PCCD, would also be created with funds appropriated during the budget process. The committee would review and comment on grants to ensure awards are geographically dispersed and consistent with the standards established. And grant money would not be permitted to substitute existing county spending on indigent criminal defense services. 
 
Few rights are as fundamental as the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee that every person charged with a crime shall have the right to counsel.  Funding indigent defense services would ensure we are complying with our constitutional mandates and spare counties from lawsuits under the Kuren decision.  It would also help to mitigate against the costs of inadequate criminal defense such as wrongful convictions and excessive sentences. 
 
You may recall Senators Hughes and Browne previously led this effort through the introduction of SB 1317 that was unanimously passed by the Senate in the fall.  We hope you will join us in cosponsoring legislation this session that helps fulfill our responsibility to ensure the fairness and integrity of our criminal justice system.