At the first court hearing after someone is arrested for a felony, a judge is supposed to decide whether the defendant can be released from jail and should appoint a lawyer if they can’t afford one.
In many Mississippi courts, that lawyer stays on the case for a short time to handle initial proceedings, including a possible motion for bond reduction, and then exits. Only after the defendant is indicted, which often takes months, is another lawyer appointed. In the meantime, no one is assigned to the case, even if the defendant is in jail.
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The Supreme Court’s rule, approved in April, was supposed to eliminate this problem. It says a lawyer can’t leave a case unless another one has taken over. All courts in the state must follow it.
Individual judges could face sanctions for not complying with the rule if someone files a complaint against them, [Supreme Court Justice Jim] Kitchens told legislators. Beyond that, however, Kitchens said it’s outside the purview of the Supreme Court to monitor local courts. “It’s not for us to go out and investigate whether that rule is being complied with,” he said.
So, just to recap, criminal defendants must have lawyers under the sixth amendment, Mississippi is failing to provide criminal defendants with lawyers, and one of their Supreme Court Justices really said, “We can’t do anything unless those people without lawyers file a lawsuit,” presumably before saying, “Now I’m off to go tell starving people I will give them a BLT, but first they need to give me the bacon lettuce tomatoe and bread to make it with.”
Mississippi seems to be the most hellish of the states. We constantly mock a few of them, but Mississippi is just really sad.
Courts across Mississippi have ignored a broader rule regarding public defense, the Daily Journal, The Marshall Project and ProPublica have found. That rule, part of a 2017 push to standardize how courts across the state operate, requires judges to send to the Supreme Court their policy on how they fulfill their constitutional obligation to provide lawyers for poor criminal defendants. Just one circuit court district, covering three rural counties in southwest Mississippi, has complied.
Rule of law, right there /s
Gosh, sounds like maybe we need a federal law
I hear you, but federal law doesn’t seem to matter in the US for some reason (I’m Canadian, so I really don’t understand this). It’s all about the law in each state, federal law be damned
That’s how the courts work, though. A higher court won’t weigh in unless the case is appealed from a lower court. Also, the SC’s job isn’t to enforce their rulings.
Supreme Courts lay out procedural rules for lower courts all the time, they routinely review those courts conduct to see if those rules are being followed, and they’re fully able to find people in contempt of court if those rules aren’t being followed. The state’s legislature or the federal DOJ could certainly get involved here to try to hold these lower courts accountable as well, but the notion that the Supreme Court is powerless here is just a bullshit dodge from someone who doesn’t want to do their job properly because he knows it will upset powerful people.
their Supreme Court Justices really said, “We can’t do anything unless those people without lawyers file a lawsuit,”
Well yeah. That’s generally how this works. There has to be a lawsuit for the court to be involved. It’s why things like the ACLU exist. To file those lawsuits on behalf of people whose civil liberties are being violated.
