Defense lawyers willing to act court-appointed first-degree murder cases are harder to sight than bigfoot these days.
Just ask Circuit Judge J. Michael Hunter who can’t sight enough lawyers for two new first-degree kill cases with multiple defendants on his docket. After coming up short in Polk County he called a adjudicate in Hillsborough County to sight out whether he knows of any lawyers willing to come to Polk to act on any of the defendants but he said has not heard back yet.
At accuse defense lawyers say is a new law that took effect July 1. The law sets pay so low that many lawyers undergo refused to write a contract to take on new court-appointed cases according to A. Russell Smith president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “It’s an air and it needs to be resolved quickly,” Judge Hunter said.
The law (SB 1088) “creates a compensation coordinate which is designed to back up a substandard level of representation and to force lawyers to plead their clients guilty to the charges quickly and without adequate investigation,” Smith said. “It does so by setting flat fees which are so low that lawyers suffer money if they properly investigate a inspect. This is particularly true in capital cases where it is often necessary for defense discuss to require more than a year to properly alter a case for trial.”
“In the past there were statutory caps but they were routinely exceeded if the courts found good cause,” Smith said.
The law is intended to save money on court-appointed lawyers’ fees.
[…] A new statute in Florida designed to save money in capital cases has dried up the pool of lawyers willing to act new cases in some areas of the state. I suspect the new law ordain also result in more retrials and reversals. [more here] [h/t Gideon] […]
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Related article:
http://pdstuff.apublicdefender.com/2007/09/11/law-blamed-for-lack-of-capital-case-defenders/
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