A Step In The Right Direction

A House subcommittee of the Tennessee Legislature approved a bill yesterday that would enable a special committee studying the administration of the state’s death penalty to continue its work until October 1, 2009. The bill still needs approval from the rest of the Legislature, but it’s a good step in the right direction.

If you take a look at the problems with the criminal justice system in Tennessee, focusing on how we deal with capital cases and fair representation for indigent defendants, it is abundantly clear that reform is imperative.

There is a HUGE disparity between the money and resources available to our state prosecutors and the public defenders who represent those who cannot afford their own attorneys. This begs the question: How can defendants who are poor obtain the constitutionally mandated right to effective counsel they are entitled to if their attorneys are overworked and underpaid?

According to Brad MacLean, Executive Director of The Tennessee Justice Project, (for full disclosure, he is one of my bosses), “Since 2005, the Legislature has funded 59 additional district attorney general positions, but only 21 additional public defender positions.” Thus, the gap between prosecutors and public defenders – already large — is growing, not shrinking. So even the most capable and hard-working attorneys are having to carry ever bigger case loads that diminish their ability to provide effective representation for each of their clients.

The resource gap is just as large. The state and federal funds made available to prosecutors in Tennessee’s indigent cases for 2005 was between $130 million and $139 million while defense attorneys received only $56.4 million, according to a June 2007 study commissioned by the Tennessee Justice Project. The 2-to-1 disparity doesn’t exactly scream “equal justice.” But that’s what you face in Tennessee if you’re poor, arrested for a crime and dependent on the same state that wants to convict and punish you to also provide your only means of defending yourself.

There are functional disparities as well. For instance, the prosecution can obtain virtually unlimited services from law enforcement and other government agencies (investigative & forensic services) to investigate its cases, but when the defense needs the same type of resources, it has to go through tons of bureaucratic red tape to justify the expense.

Bottom line is that with this much of an uneven playing field, it increases the likelihood that mistakes are being made, sometimes putting innocent people in jail, perhaps getting falsely charged or even pressured to plea out a case. Oh yeah…or unjustly sentenced to death.

This, while the guilty are out there free to commit more crimes.

What does this lead to: greater financial cost, human cost, and a lack of public confidence in the criminal justice system.

An unjust system produces unreliable results.

I work hard and pay my taxes. I am tired of my hard-earned money going toward half-thought out processes in a broken system. Especially when lives — possibly innocent lives — hang in the balance.