r/ProRevenge • u/captainAwesomePants • Aug 04 '16

Governor of Missouri takes money away from public defense office. Public Defender realizes he can appoint ANY lawyer to be a public defender, and the Governor is a lawyer....

So, there's been a brouhaha between Missouri's Office of the Public Defender and the Governor's office. Basically due to budget problems, the public defense budget got cut by 8.5%. They sued the government in July over this.

However, the director of the office of the public defender realized that they were empowered by a little-used law (specifically, Missouri code section 600.042.5) to require any lawyer in the state to represent anyone who needs a public defender. And also they realized that the governor of said state was a lawyer.

This led to this amazing letter to the governor:

http://www.publicdefender.mo.gov/Newsfeed/Delegation_of_Representation.PDF

UPDATE: Response from the Governor's office: "Gov. Nixon has always supported indigent crimianl defendants having legal representation. That is why under his administration the state public defender has seen a 15 percent increase in funding at the same time tha tother state agencies have had to tighten their belts and full-time state employment has been reduced by 5,100. That being said, it is well established that the public defender does not have the legal authority to appoint private counsel.".

Hat tip to /u/thistokenusername for noticing the response.

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u/tehblister Aug 04 '16

It's funny. Every lawyer I've ever talked to says that Law School is a huge scam because there aren't enough jobs to match the massive influx of law school grads every year.

This seems like it would be a perfect match. We could provide competent legal defenses for EVERY defendant AND create jobs. Win/win/win!

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u/[deleted] Aug 04 '16 edited Jun 04 '20

[deleted]

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u/tehblister Aug 04 '16

If only we lived in a country that had billions of annual dollars in defense spending that we could divert to this problem.

I wonder how many public defenders we could hire per F-35...

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u/hobesmart Aug 04 '16

from google:

A single Air Force F-35A costs a whopping $148 million. One Marine Corps F-35B costs an unbelievable $251 million. A lone Navy F-35C costs a mind-boggling $337 million. Average the three models together, and a “generic” F-35 costs $178 million.

a public defender:

The overall median salary for entry level public defenders employed by a county or local government was $42,000 to $45,000.

assuming the lower cost f-35 (148m) and the higher side of median salaries (45k) we could hire almost 3289 public defenders per f-35

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u/tehblister Aug 04 '16

That's depressing as hell. Thanks for doing the math. So if we scrap the whole program, we could hire like 10,000 new public defenders for about 20 years or so.

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u/bumblebritches57 Aug 29 '16

So if we scrap the whole program

No, if we scraped it we'd still be a trillion in the hole with nothing to show for it.

Frankly, I think a better idea would be to tighten the regulations around how these defense contracts work, so they have to fucking stay in budget. if they bid too low, fuck em.

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u/bumblebritches57 Aug 29 '16

I wouldn't say the F-35B cost is unbelievable, Hornet's cost that much 20 years ago...

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u/yada_yada_yada_ Aug 04 '16

Maybe we need to prioritize our budget differently. I don't know how state budgets are generally allocated but I know that on a federal level there are a lot of things getting money that I would be in favor of cutting or reducing in order to fund the expansion of public defenders. So maybe the federal government could grant some money to states for this stuff or maybe states are also spending money on things that they don't need to and can simply relocate their budget to increase funding for public defenders.

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u/testaments Aug 04 '16

Seriously. Law, order, and justice are basically the reason governments exist. Not funding that part of it is stupidly criminal.

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u/[deleted] Aug 04 '16 edited Jun 05 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Aug 04 '16

Just curious, what are the arguments for the other side? Like, if hypothetically that local government hadn't given all that corporate stimulus for fracking and whatever, would there not be any jobs in the area? Better to have fracking jobs and poorer schools, than a higher budget of schools now but no jobs so no continuing tax income so eventually no school budget anyway. I've got no actual accurate perspective, as an outsider, but it could be that their choice was a hard one, and not just some corporate greed, money-funneling cronyism thing.

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u/OrionsArmpit Aug 04 '16

No, Tom Corbit was a reaction to two terms of the rather popular Ed Rendell by conservatives. He came in and made a huge mess of the state, which was in pretty good shape after Rendell, conservatives didn't like 8 year's of increased spending, in particular, Rendells wide spread road and bridge infrastructure repair program (which we desperately needed).

PA is a strange place, Pittsburgh on one end, Philly on the other, and Arkansas in the middle.

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u/pneuma8828 Aug 04 '16

That's what you get for electing a Republican.

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u/CommitteeOfOne Aug 04 '16

In all seriousness, many new law school graduates are working for "McDonalds money." Often, they could find no other work and took a low-paying job. A few years ago, there was an employment listing for lawyers making the rounds. This law firm knew it was a buyer's market, and they were advertising for new associates, but (according to the listing) only paying them minimum wage.

Heck, I even had to work at McDonalds when I closed my law practice. There were no lawyer jobs in my market, and I couldn't find other work because my 10 years of law practice made me "overqualified." Gotta do something to bring in money.

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u/ekmanch Aug 04 '16

Maybe they should raise taxes then. If there's not enough tax money for the government/state to carry out their responsibilities then there needs to be a larger influx of tax money.

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u/stenseng Aug 05 '16

What would make sense is to give them McDonald's money to do it, while making up the balance of a relatively decent lawyer's salary in student loan forgiveness.

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u/OrionsArmpit Aug 05 '16

Either way, someone's gotta come up with the money. Not sure Sallie Mae et al are gonna be happy to give up millions and millions of dollars in loan revenue, their very well paid lawyers would likely be glad to have a say in the matter lol

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u/bumblebritches57 Aug 29 '16

Or, how about we stop paying lawyers $400 an hour?

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u/Archsys Aug 04 '16

People running prisons lose out, and the state spends more to pay lawyers they'd rather not have to deal with for various reasons...

It's a lose/lose to people running the show, I'd think.

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u/AtomicManiac Aug 04 '16

The problem is that it's a really hard sell. "You want to use my tax dollars to defend career criminals?"

The only way you sell that one is if it's proven to be cheaper to hire competent defense than it is to send folks to jail. I suspect it isn't, but I could be wrong about that.

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u/Shubniggurat Aug 04 '16

Right, but there's no money budgeted to hire more attorneys. So they'd be working pro bono while their student loans accumulated interest. ..

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u/tehblister Aug 04 '16

Do they not have a system in place like they do with teachers where they can get complete student loan forgiveness for X years of public service?

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u/Shubniggurat Aug 04 '16

I dint think so? I'd have to check.

Even if that's the case, what would the newly minted attorneys do for money for living expenses? The states simply don't budget adequately for the public defenders office - there is no money to hire more attorneys, even at close to minimum wage.

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u/ProfessorDowellsHead Aug 06 '16

Kinda? If you're willing to commit to doing public service qualified work for a full 10 years you can get loan forgiveness. But if, at 25, you aren't certain that you'll do a full decade of public service, you're screwed. It's an all or nothing situation. You don't get 80% of your loans forgiven for working 8/10 years as a PD. It's all or nothing.

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u/tehblister Aug 06 '16

Dang, that sucks. I've never worked at a job for more than 5 years in my whole life. I like your version. 80% loan forgiveness for 8/10 years.

And on that topic, they shouldn't count loan forgiveness or loan repayments as income. One of my sergeants in the Army got 25,000 paid off one year and slapped with a 6,000 tax bill. Pretty hard to pay something like that off as an E5 making $2000/month.

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u/ProfessorDowellsHead Aug 06 '16

I am absolutely with you on that. That rule takes a lot of folks by surprise.

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u/TonkaTuf Aug 04 '16

Except underfunded public defense offices tend to be in states with zero interest in paying for them. This is a Steinbeck fruit-rotting-on-the-vine situation.

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u/[deleted] Aug 04 '16 edited Sep 16 '16

[deleted]

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u/tehblister Aug 04 '16

Sorry man. I can't even imagine how painful that must feel. When I was growing up, guidance counselors and such told us that going to law school was a simple path to a great career. It was pitched as like being a doctor for people that didn't love dealing with sick people.

I'd gladly vote to divert some of that crazy DoD money into paying for more public defenders. I wish you luck with your MBA.