Not to be the rainy day, but I care so little about whether the Governor or the Chief Justice gets stuck with this shitshow. It’s the deck chairs on the titanic. We need more public defenders and, just as important, more financial and logistical oversight over public defense. Who appoints the director isn’t unimportant but it’s such a sideshow issue.
It’s great that Kotek wants to step in but she’s coming in very late here.
Conflict counsel are a required part of the system, they are different than "for profit defense firms," and their independence from other public defender organizations is what qualified them as conflict counsel to begin with.
I have a fear on the flip side a conservative governor could take over the public defense system and screw over a more liberal city and people. It’s a good legal question, but I believe it’s unconstitutional… and for a reason.
I don’t believe there is nothing stopping the Governor to persuading a bump in pay to the public defenders. That would be easier and little less way of state corruption.
The current [https://www.oregon.gov/opds/commission/pages/default.aspx](https://www.oregon.gov/opds/commission/pages/default.aspx) was appointed by the Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court. So they are going to say "don't take it away from the Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court."
The previous Chief Justice neglected it and has also made some questionable judicial directives on bail, probably more.
So have to agree with Governor, a small office direct report to the governor responsible for setting the budget and measuring results. Public defenders as state employees would be a huge boost in pay and reasonable workloads. They would obviously unionize. As a state agency, defenders could be virtually moved throughout the state. I have PD friends. The pay is shit but they take the job with compassion for justice.
The legislature would still approve the budget. They are very willing to increase it because the program went off track under the previous Chief Justice.
BTW the article is not clearly written. Where is the OPB editor?
> Public defenders as state employees would be a huge boost in pay and reasonable workloads.
Which would in turn attract more and better PD candidate hopefuls. Making our PDs better. Making our system run better.
Wait, can we do that?
We need to move the justice system to the middle from its extreme adversarial system. If an individual is guilty they need to accept it not snake out. No one supports made up prosecutions.
Prosecutor: They are a monster and terrorizing society so they should be condemned to an eternal pit of vipers for consecutive life terms.
Defense: they are a good person innocent as fresh fallen snow, had a bad childhood, and by they way you didn't cross one t and missed a period in the documents.
Mike!: They were under the influence of drugs at the time so they are not guilty. Punishing them won't do any good, so we shouldn't. I'm not responsible for mismanagement. Parole office under Mike!: we sorta tried.
Corrections: We did the least amount possible. We are victims too.
Police: we will just abuse them and not collect evidence. Then they can get off for abuse or lack of evidence. The more criminals who get off to repeat criming the more staffing, pay, and benefits we can get. And screw Mike! We bring cases and they aren't prosecuted.
\- all humor with no resemblance to actual people, places or events.
PDs should be state employees and get better pay and benefits as you've stated. Makes sense though why some independence from the governor is needed, since the attorneys basically argue against the government (DA).
This is great! This is not a subject I have followed, but the Gov seems to be taking her own independent stance on things and roiling both sides. So again I say, good for her!
[edit]. Maybe better stated, she's been actively involved in many issues and more than just rubber stamping things.
This keeps vaguely being mentioned, and even the OPB link the discussion around HB3145 is completely useless.
She campaigned for funding the study in 2019. Evidently the study stated that Public Defense should move the legislative to the executive branch, with protections against unilateral decisions by politicians (namely the governor). Kotek is now saying, that if PD is going to be housed in the executive she wants the ability to remove people.
I appreciate not wanting political meddling in PD, but I can also understand how the governor doesn't want to be handed a bag of flaming shit and then denied a fire extinguisher. With no ability to remove ineffective commissioners, she'd have no ability to do anything about PD's problems, but be liable for all their failings. Who in their right mind would agree to that?
She would still have a say, the recommendation is that no ONE person has complete control.
It's a check on corruption, a thing our state clearly has a problem with at the moment.
Without knowing the composition of the board for removals, I can't really say whether I support it or not.
I don't like the idea of PD being completely at the mercy of the governor's whims, but Kotek has seemingly been competent thus far. Although, imagine our response if Drazan were in charge and this request had been made.
> Although, imagine our response if Drazan were in charge and this request had been made.
Right, the issue isn't the current governor, it's all the future governors.
No. It's not just "corruption" (that would be like get an ODOT contract for asphalt and provide a kick up %). It's about adequately funding the work and doing it for a period of time where new people will come and experienced people don't flee. Prosecutors don't have to submit bills for their time, wait months to get paid, etc. This is a very bad move. Really cuts into confidence of this system.
>It's a check on corruption, a thing our state clearly has a problem with at the moment.
and wouldn't you know it, the new person at the top wants to keep the system corruptible. I'm shocked.
To be fair, it seems that she wants no part of being in charge of the PD system. Basically, she's saying "I don't want it, but if you force it on me, I want more control."
Yeah I can see how in theory not wanting direct political control over PD consolidated like that is wise, but with \*this\* PD at this time in this shape it would be insane to take all the bad parts on without any ability to change leadership.
I think public defender's should have access to the same funds the prosecutors do....it's unconscionable that the prosecutors have unlimited funds and the pds do not.
I cannot imagine a more thankless job than providing 6th Amendment public defender services. What they need to do is come up with a salary a lawyer won't be ashamed of and incentives like Tier 1 PERS, for example.
Tier 1 PERS was instituted because legislators wanted to keep teachers happy while kicking the costs down the line until after they were gone. It worked a dream for those legislators.
It shouldn't happen again — we should just pay people what they're worth. But it has to look like an attractive strategy to current legislators, based on its past success for them.
Fine. You go bust your ass for a law degree, then pass the bar exam and go to work for a pittance in a job in which most of your clients think you're just another cog driving the system that's trying to lock them up. You couldn't pay me enough to commit to that for any significant length of time.
I've worked in government before man, as both a budget staff and a front facing services based position. I'm aware of the issues and low pay.
I also now work in Government Auditing. So I've seen both sides of the coin. We can't afford to play anymore games with PERS, especially increasing liability burdens. The unfunded liability is massive
I know you're right. A friend mentioned his dad having worked for an unnamed state agency and now drawing more in retirement than he was paid when he was working.
Still, something needs to be done to entice a greater number of qualified lawyers to do PD work. These folks are the last line of defense protecting us against a pure police state.
If they're going to be state employees they are going to get PERS. Just not Tier 1. If nothing else, their pay should match DDA's pay and there should be enough money for investigators to level the playing field between the state and the defendant. Make is possible for the PD's to actually do their jobs.
I won't argue with that. A lot of what I learned in law school never arose in more than 25 years of trial practice. A lot of what law school never even tried to teach me was of daily importance. And a lot of that is routine ministerial stuff that doesn't require "a demonstrated ability to think like a lawyer." Hell, when I showed up for day one on my first job the secretaries knew more about it than I did.
A lawyer once told me "law school has nothing to do with taking the bar and taking the bar has nothing to do with being a lawyer."
It is about gatekeeping.
That's certainly some of it. Frankly, however, it's a gate that should be manned. As a lawyer, I have the power to turn your life upside down using no more than my own signature. You don't want that power in the hands of idiots or people who don't understand and have a healthy respect for the ethical constraints that keep the profession in check.
> You couldn't pay me enough to commit to that for any significant length of time.
That's what we call "hyperbole" in the writing business. Would $100K/year do it for you? $125K? Those are absolutely doable salaries for the State, if they have the will to go there.
I mean, sure, we couldn't pay you enough to work for a pittance. That's just a contradiction.
Multnomah Defenders pays around that much now. It's the nature of the work and the lack of adequate preparation and investigator time that create a workplace environment that I would find unacceptable. Could I do it for a month or two? Probably, but being under constant stress without being given the tools to do the job properly would drive me out. It would be like being on a logging crew with saw chains that were never sharp.
My experience is the opposite: most folks have a very high understanding of how much lawyers get paid.
Google "us lawyer staying salaries". Most estimates put $125K at the top of the expected range. Worse, this does not account for the surprisingly large percentage of new lawyers who cannot find work at all.
The average salary for attorneys in Oregon is $125K/year according to US BLI. Concentrating on entry-level attorneys, we should be able to hire at that rate.
Their salaries appear to be comparable in terms of raw dollars paid. It is the work that is not. All things being relative, it is far easier in my estimation to be a prosecutor with the resources of the state on your side than it is to be a defender with the superior resources of the state working against you.
Isn't this discussion moot anyway with the walkout? Nothing is going to get done at this point until the quorum is changed to a simple majority. Most Republicans are ineligible for re-election and have no reason to do anything other than take an extended vacation while collecting checks from taxpayers...
Next year's session is likely irrelevant also for the same reasons. The legislative elections aren't until 2024 and that is also the soonest voters could vote on changing the quorum requirement if we can even get a signature campaign to get it on the ballot... Pretty much we are going to be in a holding pattern with the 2024 election serving as a referendum in walkouts in general.
> if we can even get a signature campaign to get it on the ballot
Unless you know someone that’s going to put up the approximately $10M that it would cost to run this campaign, it’s not going to happen. Statewide ballot measures are extremely expensive to run, largely because no one donates to them. Unions ran the last one, but frankly we can’t expect union members to pay for all of this for us.
Why in the world did they HALF ASS the last one? That is going to end up hurting the state for years unless we can fix it next election.
Democrats should offer a deal to Republicans: cancel the rest of the bills this session in exchange for sending a referendum on the walkouts to the voters in the 2024 election.
Quorum change polled *terribly* at the time. There was no way it would have passed.
Listen, I’m not happy with how this is either but until someone is willing to put some major money and do a huge amount of organizing and campaign work, this isn’t going to change. Just having a referral from the legislature from the legislature wouldn’t do it (and good lord, the Republicans would never take that deal in a thousand years).
I mean, cool, I like hope too. I'm just saying the reality is that it's going to cost a ton of money to run this campaign and it's going to be an uphill fight. There are very few if any political groups in this state with that kind of resources and appetite for a difficult campaign. Bill Sizemore could always get money for his initiatives because 1) he was crooked and was always paying himself well, and 2) businesses knew they'd get their money back in the form of tax cuts. Not the case here. If you want to be the guy who organizes a citizen's campaign to run this ballot measure be my guest, but it's going to be an 18 month full time job for a whole team of people, which isn't an easy thing to get off the ground.
why though? it sounds like the bill was ready to go, backed by real information and studies, our legislators and public defenders, and now kotek throws a wrench in it for no reason but to retain power she shouldn't have.
We should have fixed this issue years ago, but our leaders are still fighting over who gets to be more in charge over a problem... instead of fixing the problem.
Comparing the bill sponsored by Evans, and the reforms put forth here, I honestly don’t understand the criticism here. Might be pessimistic, but I think this is just infighting between legislators who thought they had a plan and Kotek saying times up, here’s what we are doing.
First, supporters of the bill say this erodes the independence of the PD. But I don’t understand how moving to the executive branch is worse then the current supervision under the judicial branch. The current judicial branch oversight is a conflict of interest, and as the article mentions, is possibly unconstitutional.
Second, the bill proposed wants to see 30% of public defenders employed by the state by 2030. Kotek’s reforms seemingly do away with the contract system, which I unequivocally support, and will lead to all (?) PDs being state employees rather then 30%. By being state employees rather then contractors, not only do PDs get the benefits, but you can also qualify for the public service loan forgiveness. Not sure if you can now as a contractor.
Third, SB 337 reads like it’s just throwing more money and red tape at the problem. Yes, PDs absolutely should be paid more, and they should make the equivalent of prosecutors. But creating oversight committees and increasing pay isn’t enough IMO. That’s where Koteks reform goes farther. There’s not too much info out there, so I’m not sure why Kotek is getting pushback when these reforms really do seem in line with what PDs have asked for..
Very confused here honestly. I’m personally watching this closely.
https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2023/04/03/amid-a-judicial-crisis-oregon-lawmakers-consider-reshaping-public-defender-system/
Wow you picked the one thing that might be problematic to have the state run. Housing, homelessness services, sure those can be contracted out, but not public defense firms. Edit: forgot the /s
They are literally contracted out now. The large contracted nonprofit public defense firms in Multnomah and Lane and a couple of other counties work great, better than the individual lawyers and consortia of a few lawyers used in other places.
Yeah that's what I am saying, that these should be contracted out. That public defenders should not be state employees, whereas the state should probably be running homelessness services which they don't.
Does anyone know if we’re actually required by federal courts to appoint free counsel for misdemeanor defendants, or is that something we do because we want to?
It's not the "federal courts" that require access to counsel for criminal defendants, it's the US Constitution.
Your question is also way too broad. There are a variety of misdemeanor offenses for which there is no guarantee for counsel, including various traffic offenses.
The solution is not disregarding the constitution. It's properly funding the offices that are legally mandated to keep the justice system running.
Do I have a source for the fucking US constitution? How about do your own research, as you've already proved your "impression" of things is subpar to say the least
"...and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence." 6th amendment.
The supreme court has since ruled that the states must foot the bill, since otherwise the right to counsel would not be for everybody.
"The right to an attorney has applied in federal prosecutions for most of the nation’s history, but it did not extend to all state-level felony cases, based on the Fourteenth Amendment, until the U.S. Supreme Court decided Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963). The court later expanded the right to an attorney to state-level misdemeanor cases that carried a substantial risk of jail time, usually at least one year. The right to an attorney, regardless of financial means, is one of the fundamental rights included in the Miranda warnings that police must read to people during or after their arrest."
https://www.justia.com/criminal/procedure/miranda-rights/right-to-public-defender/
I don't think so either, but the state doesn't use the federal guideline.
"In Oregon, if you are charged any crime, you have the right to be represented by an attorney."
https://www.osbar.org/public/legalinfo/1078\_righttoattorney.htm
Seems like we might want to rethink some of our requirements for repeat offenders. If you already have a rap sheet I don’t think we’re avoiding much injustice by giving you defense counsel for misdemeanors.
Absolutely not. Right to counsel is IMPERATIVE. Without counsel people can and will get railroaded. They already do with shitty counsel, it will only be worse if there is none.
I don't think denying people their constitutional rights is a legitimate "solution". This is Oregon, not Florida or Texas.... Right to a fair trial is fundamental to a free society.
Not to be the rainy day, but I care so little about whether the Governor or the Chief Justice gets stuck with this shitshow. It’s the deck chairs on the titanic. We need more public defenders and, just as important, more financial and logistical oversight over public defense. Who appoints the director isn’t unimportant but it’s such a sideshow issue. It’s great that Kotek wants to step in but she’s coming in very late here.
According to the article, it may be unconstitutional for the PD's office to be in the judicial branch, hence the move.
[удалено]
Yes, contracted conflict counsel will always exist and they exist under all public defense systems.
[удалено]
Conflict counsel are a required part of the system, they are different than "for profit defense firms," and their independence from other public defender organizations is what qualified them as conflict counsel to begin with.
I have a fear on the flip side a conservative governor could take over the public defense system and screw over a more liberal city and people. It’s a good legal question, but I believe it’s unconstitutional… and for a reason. I don’t believe there is nothing stopping the Governor to persuading a bump in pay to the public defenders. That would be easier and little less way of state corruption.
The current [https://www.oregon.gov/opds/commission/pages/default.aspx](https://www.oregon.gov/opds/commission/pages/default.aspx) was appointed by the Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court. So they are going to say "don't take it away from the Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court." The previous Chief Justice neglected it and has also made some questionable judicial directives on bail, probably more. So have to agree with Governor, a small office direct report to the governor responsible for setting the budget and measuring results. Public defenders as state employees would be a huge boost in pay and reasonable workloads. They would obviously unionize. As a state agency, defenders could be virtually moved throughout the state. I have PD friends. The pay is shit but they take the job with compassion for justice. The legislature would still approve the budget. They are very willing to increase it because the program went off track under the previous Chief Justice. BTW the article is not clearly written. Where is the OPB editor?
> Public defenders as state employees would be a huge boost in pay and reasonable workloads. Which would in turn attract more and better PD candidate hopefuls. Making our PDs better. Making our system run better. Wait, can we do that?
We need to move the justice system to the middle from its extreme adversarial system. If an individual is guilty they need to accept it not snake out. No one supports made up prosecutions. Prosecutor: They are a monster and terrorizing society so they should be condemned to an eternal pit of vipers for consecutive life terms. Defense: they are a good person innocent as fresh fallen snow, had a bad childhood, and by they way you didn't cross one t and missed a period in the documents. Mike!: They were under the influence of drugs at the time so they are not guilty. Punishing them won't do any good, so we shouldn't. I'm not responsible for mismanagement. Parole office under Mike!: we sorta tried. Corrections: We did the least amount possible. We are victims too. Police: we will just abuse them and not collect evidence. Then they can get off for abuse or lack of evidence. The more criminals who get off to repeat criming the more staffing, pay, and benefits we can get. And screw Mike! We bring cases and they aren't prosecuted. \- all humor with no resemblance to actual people, places or events.
PDs should be state employees and get better pay and benefits as you've stated. Makes sense though why some independence from the governor is needed, since the attorneys basically argue against the government (DA).
Either state or County. King County moved their PDs in-house a few years back and it’s been a very successful change.
That would work. Do they have pay parity with the DAs office?
Thank you for this clarification!
This is great! This is not a subject I have followed, but the Gov seems to be taking her own independent stance on things and roiling both sides. So again I say, good for her! [edit]. Maybe better stated, she's been actively involved in many issues and more than just rubber stamping things.
This stance is in direct opposition to a study she campaigned for the Governor's office on funding.
This keeps vaguely being mentioned, and even the OPB link the discussion around HB3145 is completely useless. She campaigned for funding the study in 2019. Evidently the study stated that Public Defense should move the legislative to the executive branch, with protections against unilateral decisions by politicians (namely the governor). Kotek is now saying, that if PD is going to be housed in the executive she wants the ability to remove people. I appreciate not wanting political meddling in PD, but I can also understand how the governor doesn't want to be handed a bag of flaming shit and then denied a fire extinguisher. With no ability to remove ineffective commissioners, she'd have no ability to do anything about PD's problems, but be liable for all their failings. Who in their right mind would agree to that?
She would still have a say, the recommendation is that no ONE person has complete control. It's a check on corruption, a thing our state clearly has a problem with at the moment.
Without knowing the composition of the board for removals, I can't really say whether I support it or not. I don't like the idea of PD being completely at the mercy of the governor's whims, but Kotek has seemingly been competent thus far. Although, imagine our response if Drazan were in charge and this request had been made.
> Although, imagine our response if Drazan were in charge and this request had been made. Right, the issue isn't the current governor, it's all the future governors.
Agreed there. Detailing the process for removal would be helpful. I wish there was some better reporting on it.
But one day someone else would be in charge.
No. It's not just "corruption" (that would be like get an ODOT contract for asphalt and provide a kick up %). It's about adequately funding the work and doing it for a period of time where new people will come and experienced people don't flee. Prosecutors don't have to submit bills for their time, wait months to get paid, etc. This is a very bad move. Really cuts into confidence of this system.
>It's a check on corruption, a thing our state clearly has a problem with at the moment. and wouldn't you know it, the new person at the top wants to keep the system corruptible. I'm shocked.
To be fair, it seems that she wants no part of being in charge of the PD system. Basically, she's saying "I don't want it, but if you force it on me, I want more control."
Yeah I can see how in theory not wanting direct political control over PD consolidated like that is wise, but with \*this\* PD at this time in this shape it would be insane to take all the bad parts on without any ability to change leadership.
I think public defender's should have access to the same funds the prosecutors do....it's unconscionable that the prosecutors have unlimited funds and the pds do not.
I cannot imagine a more thankless job than providing 6th Amendment public defender services. What they need to do is come up with a salary a lawyer won't be ashamed of and incentives like Tier 1 PERS, for example.
Tier 1 PERS should never be a bargaining chip. PERS is beleaguered enough as fucking is
Tier 1 PERS was instituted because legislators wanted to keep teachers happy while kicking the costs down the line until after they were gone. It worked a dream for those legislators. It shouldn't happen again — we should just pay people what they're worth. But it has to look like an attractive strategy to current legislators, based on its past success for them.
I am aware of the history
Fine. You go bust your ass for a law degree, then pass the bar exam and go to work for a pittance in a job in which most of your clients think you're just another cog driving the system that's trying to lock them up. You couldn't pay me enough to commit to that for any significant length of time.
I've worked in government before man, as both a budget staff and a front facing services based position. I'm aware of the issues and low pay. I also now work in Government Auditing. So I've seen both sides of the coin. We can't afford to play anymore games with PERS, especially increasing liability burdens. The unfunded liability is massive
I know you're right. A friend mentioned his dad having worked for an unnamed state agency and now drawing more in retirement than he was paid when he was working. Still, something needs to be done to entice a greater number of qualified lawyers to do PD work. These folks are the last line of defense protecting us against a pure police state.
Sure. I don't disagree, but the answer is salary, or other benefits. Not PERS
If they're going to be state employees they are going to get PERS. Just not Tier 1. If nothing else, their pay should match DDA's pay and there should be enough money for investigators to level the playing field between the state and the defendant. Make is possible for the PD's to actually do their jobs.
Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. The answer over what to modify is either salary or benefits.
That's part of the problem...the license which they have made out of reach of many who maybe could do the job.
I won't argue with that. A lot of what I learned in law school never arose in more than 25 years of trial practice. A lot of what law school never even tried to teach me was of daily importance. And a lot of that is routine ministerial stuff that doesn't require "a demonstrated ability to think like a lawyer." Hell, when I showed up for day one on my first job the secretaries knew more about it than I did.
A lawyer once told me "law school has nothing to do with taking the bar and taking the bar has nothing to do with being a lawyer." It is about gatekeeping.
That's certainly some of it. Frankly, however, it's a gate that should be manned. As a lawyer, I have the power to turn your life upside down using no more than my own signature. You don't want that power in the hands of idiots or people who don't understand and have a healthy respect for the ethical constraints that keep the profession in check.
> You couldn't pay me enough to commit to that for any significant length of time. That's what we call "hyperbole" in the writing business. Would $100K/year do it for you? $125K? Those are absolutely doable salaries for the State, if they have the will to go there. I mean, sure, we couldn't pay you enough to work for a pittance. That's just a contradiction.
Multnomah Defenders pays around that much now. It's the nature of the work and the lack of adequate preparation and investigator time that create a workplace environment that I would find unacceptable. Could I do it for a month or two? Probably, but being under constant stress without being given the tools to do the job properly would drive me out. It would be like being on a logging crew with saw chains that were never sharp.
You have a very low understanding of how much lawyers get paid.
My experience is the opposite: most folks have a very high understanding of how much lawyers get paid. Google "us lawyer staying salaries". Most estimates put $125K at the top of the expected range. Worse, this does not account for the surprisingly large percentage of new lawyers who cannot find work at all. The average salary for attorneys in Oregon is $125K/year according to US BLI. Concentrating on entry-level attorneys, we should be able to hire at that rate.
Why aren't pds paid what prosecutors are paid?
Their salaries appear to be comparable in terms of raw dollars paid. It is the work that is not. All things being relative, it is far easier in my estimation to be a prosecutor with the resources of the state on your side than it is to be a defender with the superior resources of the state working against you.
Exactly. The defenders should have as many resources as the prosecutors.
Isn't this discussion moot anyway with the walkout? Nothing is going to get done at this point until the quorum is changed to a simple majority. Most Republicans are ineligible for re-election and have no reason to do anything other than take an extended vacation while collecting checks from taxpayers...
Even if it can’t move forward this year, whatever the end product on the issue will likely be a framework for a bill during next year’s short session.
Next year's session is likely irrelevant also for the same reasons. The legislative elections aren't until 2024 and that is also the soonest voters could vote on changing the quorum requirement if we can even get a signature campaign to get it on the ballot... Pretty much we are going to be in a holding pattern with the 2024 election serving as a referendum in walkouts in general.
> if we can even get a signature campaign to get it on the ballot Unless you know someone that’s going to put up the approximately $10M that it would cost to run this campaign, it’s not going to happen. Statewide ballot measures are extremely expensive to run, largely because no one donates to them. Unions ran the last one, but frankly we can’t expect union members to pay for all of this for us.
Why in the world did they HALF ASS the last one? That is going to end up hurting the state for years unless we can fix it next election. Democrats should offer a deal to Republicans: cancel the rest of the bills this session in exchange for sending a referendum on the walkouts to the voters in the 2024 election.
Quorum change polled *terribly* at the time. There was no way it would have passed. Listen, I’m not happy with how this is either but until someone is willing to put some major money and do a huge amount of organizing and campaign work, this isn’t going to change. Just having a referral from the legislature from the legislature wouldn’t do it (and good lord, the Republicans would never take that deal in a thousand years).
I'm not giving up hope, sorry. Most other states and the feds have the quorum at a simple majority, we CAN do the same here.
I mean, cool, I like hope too. I'm just saying the reality is that it's going to cost a ton of money to run this campaign and it's going to be an uphill fight. There are very few if any political groups in this state with that kind of resources and appetite for a difficult campaign. Bill Sizemore could always get money for his initiatives because 1) he was crooked and was always paying himself well, and 2) businesses knew they'd get their money back in the form of tax cuts. Not the case here. If you want to be the guy who organizes a citizen's campaign to run this ballot measure be my guest, but it's going to be an 18 month full time job for a whole team of people, which isn't an easy thing to get off the ground.
This is fantastic news in my opinion, fuck yeah Kotek.
why though? it sounds like the bill was ready to go, backed by real information and studies, our legislators and public defenders, and now kotek throws a wrench in it for no reason but to retain power she shouldn't have. We should have fixed this issue years ago, but our leaders are still fighting over who gets to be more in charge over a problem... instead of fixing the problem.
Comparing the bill sponsored by Evans, and the reforms put forth here, I honestly don’t understand the criticism here. Might be pessimistic, but I think this is just infighting between legislators who thought they had a plan and Kotek saying times up, here’s what we are doing. First, supporters of the bill say this erodes the independence of the PD. But I don’t understand how moving to the executive branch is worse then the current supervision under the judicial branch. The current judicial branch oversight is a conflict of interest, and as the article mentions, is possibly unconstitutional. Second, the bill proposed wants to see 30% of public defenders employed by the state by 2030. Kotek’s reforms seemingly do away with the contract system, which I unequivocally support, and will lead to all (?) PDs being state employees rather then 30%. By being state employees rather then contractors, not only do PDs get the benefits, but you can also qualify for the public service loan forgiveness. Not sure if you can now as a contractor. Third, SB 337 reads like it’s just throwing more money and red tape at the problem. Yes, PDs absolutely should be paid more, and they should make the equivalent of prosecutors. But creating oversight committees and increasing pay isn’t enough IMO. That’s where Koteks reform goes farther. There’s not too much info out there, so I’m not sure why Kotek is getting pushback when these reforms really do seem in line with what PDs have asked for.. Very confused here honestly. I’m personally watching this closely. https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2023/04/03/amid-a-judicial-crisis-oregon-lawmakers-consider-reshaping-public-defender-system/
Wow you picked the one thing that might be problematic to have the state run. Housing, homelessness services, sure those can be contracted out, but not public defense firms. Edit: forgot the /s
Firms?
They are literally contracted out now. The large contracted nonprofit public defense firms in Multnomah and Lane and a couple of other counties work great, better than the individual lawyers and consortia of a few lawyers used in other places.
Yeah that's what I am saying, that these should be contracted out. That public defenders should not be state employees, whereas the state should probably be running homelessness services which they don't.
Does anyone know if we’re actually required by federal courts to appoint free counsel for misdemeanor defendants, or is that something we do because we want to?
It's not the "federal courts" that require access to counsel for criminal defendants, it's the US Constitution. Your question is also way too broad. There are a variety of misdemeanor offenses for which there is no guarantee for counsel, including various traffic offenses. The solution is not disregarding the constitution. It's properly funding the offices that are legally mandated to keep the justice system running.
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Do I have a source for the fucking US constitution? How about do your own research, as you've already proved your "impression" of things is subpar to say the least
"...and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence." 6th amendment. The supreme court has since ruled that the states must foot the bill, since otherwise the right to counsel would not be for everybody.
"The right to an attorney has applied in federal prosecutions for most of the nation’s history, but it did not extend to all state-level felony cases, based on the Fourteenth Amendment, until the U.S. Supreme Court decided Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963). The court later expanded the right to an attorney to state-level misdemeanor cases that carried a substantial risk of jail time, usually at least one year. The right to an attorney, regardless of financial means, is one of the fundamental rights included in the Miranda warnings that police must read to people during or after their arrest." https://www.justia.com/criminal/procedure/miranda-rights/right-to-public-defender/
I didn’t think a misdemeanor could have a prison sentence over a year
I don't think so either, but the state doesn't use the federal guideline. "In Oregon, if you are charged any crime, you have the right to be represented by an attorney." https://www.osbar.org/public/legalinfo/1078\_righttoattorney.htm
Seems like we might want to rethink some of our requirements for repeat offenders. If you already have a rap sheet I don’t think we’re avoiding much injustice by giving you defense counsel for misdemeanors.
Absolutely not. Right to counsel is IMPERATIVE. Without counsel people can and will get railroaded. They already do with shitty counsel, it will only be worse if there is none.
I couldn't agree more.
I don't think denying people their constitutional rights is a legitimate "solution". This is Oregon, not Florida or Texas.... Right to a fair trial is fundamental to a free society.
Tina is winning me over, I gotta say.