Last week a ruling came down from the Baltimore City Circuit Court that now
entitles "poor" or indigent defendants the right to counsel when they appear before a
commissioner at their initial bail hearing. According to a Baltimore Sun article if this ruling is upheld it could be a "historic leap in constitutional protection throughout Maryland."
The ruling was issued by Circuit Court Judge Alfred Nance, a reversal of his decision
from 2007. According to Nance "if bail is denied or set at a level that the defendant cannot afford, the defendant is deprived of his or her freedom, a fundamental right."
In theory this ruling seems like a no brainer. Individuals who cannot afford private
counsel would now be provided with a public representative throughout the entire legal process. Currently, indigent individuals could be incarcerated anywhere from 1-30 days without representation. Due to the fact that the demand for representation is greater than the supply of available public counsel, a defendant usually will not obtain this representation until after their bail review hearing. However, the lack of currently available public representatives is a major problem.
If the current supply of publicly available counsel is already stretched thin, how would
adding an additional task to their plate improve anything? The State of Maryland would need to hire a lot more lawyers to the Public Defenders Office in order to handle this increased demand. Initial Bail Reviews are also conducted 24 hours a day; this would mean that public counsel would be working all hours of the day/night. I would highly doubt that a new, young lawyer fresh out of law school would be eager to take on this task. This is going to present a major issue when it comes to finding additional lawyers to fill these positions.
"This is the first time that a Maryland court has recognized that poor people are entitled
to legal representation when they first appear before a judicial officer" according to Doug
Colbert, a University of Maryland School of Law professor. I would ask Mr. Colbert how he plans on funding this new endeavor. If the clients are without available funds, they clearly would not be assisting in the expenses. Thus, the only feasible answer would be to raise taxes on the citizens of Baltimore City who work for a living and are not out allegedly committing these crimes in the first place. I would also argue that although freedom may be a fundamental right, when you are being accused of commiting a crime you may in fact eventually lose that right.
