Class Action Settlement Will Improve NY Public Defender System

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New York State has agreed to a class action settlement that will ensure indigent criminal defendants in five counties have legal representation at their arraignment. The deal has been deemed a “historic” overhaul of the state’s public defense system.

On Tuesday, the parties asked Justice Gerald W. Connolly to preliminarily approve the proposed class action settlement. The class action settlement will ensure that criminal defendants in five New York counties who are eligible for publicly funded legal representation will be represented by public defenders at their arraignment.

The 6th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to legal representation. The 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainwright required states to provide defense attorneys to criminal defendants who could not afford to hire one on their own. New York subsequently implemented a public defense system that was run by the counties. In 2006, it was determined that New York’s system delivered an “unconstitutional level” of legal defense to indigent defendants because the offices did not receive adequate funding.

The class action lawsuit was initially filed in November 2007 and alleged that the public defenders in Onondaga, Ontario, Schuyler, Suffolk and Washington counties were so overworked that indigent criminal defendants basically received no legal defense. The case had been scheduled to go to trial today.

The public defenders in these counties reportedly spent an average of four hours with their clients and spent less than an hour investigating a defendant’s case. The class action lawsuit alleged that the heavy caseloads essentially made the public defender in these counties “a lawyer in name only.”

Under the terms of the public defender class action settlement, New York’s office of Indigent Legal Services will develop statewide standards to determine which defendants are eligible for a public defender. This requirement is expected to increase the number of criminal defendants served. The class action settlement also requires the state to guarantee that all indigent criminal defendants will have a public defender at their first court appearance within 20 months.

Governor Andrew Cuomo said the class action settlement “addresses longstanding inequities.” He has pledged to include $5.5 million in his executive budgets over the next two years as part of the class action settlement agreement. “I am proud that we have been able to reach a resolution that results in a fairer, more humane justice system,” Cuomo said.

The plaintiffs are represented by Corey Stoughton, Christopher T. Dunn, Mariko Hirose, Erin B. Harrist, Philip Desgranges and Dana B. Wolfe of the New York Civil Liberties Union; and Gary Stein, Daniel Greenberg, Kristie Blase, Matthew Schmidt, Daniel Cohen, Amanda Jawad, Noah Gillespie and Peter Shadzik of Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP.

The New York Public Defender Class Action Lawsuit is Kimberly Hurrell-Harring, et al. v. The State of New York, et al., Index No. 8866-07, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of Albany.