Notable new reporting on how “free” public defenders often come with a fee

The Marshall Project has this interesting new feature story headlined “If You Can’t Afford an Attorney, One Will Be Appointed. And You May Get a Huge Bill.”  I recommend the full piece, and here are excerpts:

On television and in the movies, police officers read people their Miranda rights and tell them they will be provided a lawyer if they cannot afford one.  But in reality, legal representation is rarely free.  The Supreme Court has found the Constitution guarantees the right to counsel but allows states, in most cases, to try to recoup the cost.  More than 40 do so, according to a 2022 report by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association.

Iowa takes these efforts to the extremes, an investigation by The Marshall Project found. Not only does Iowa impose some of the highest fees in the nation — affecting tens of thousands of people each year — it also charges poor people for legal aid even if they are acquitted or the cases against them are dropped.  The practice is “definitely an outlier,” said Lisa Foster, co-executive director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center, an advocacy organization that tracks court debts….

Sixty years after Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling guaranteeing the right to counsel, the systems that provide poor people with lawyers in criminal courts are crumbling.  Public defenders flounder under impossible caseloads.  Private lawyers don’t want to take low-paying court appointments. Poor people languish in crowded jails or take plea deals to avoid incarceration.  Problems with public defense have become so dire that the U.S. Department of Justice has been hosting listening sessions across the country about problems with access to lawyers.

But there is also a less-known issue: So-called “free” lawyers aren’t free.  This summer, the American Bar Association released guidelines recommending that poor people shouldn’t have to pay for a lawyer in criminal cases.  But in Dothan, Alabama, for example, people charged with Class C and D felonies, which commonly include low-level drug charges, must pay a flat fee of $2,000.  In rural Anderson County, in East Texas, people are charged $750 to plead out to a third-degree felony.  If they choose to go to trial, they must pay $750 a day for legal counsel.