Gov. Eric Greitens no longer is a defendant in part of the ACLU's lawsuit challenging the state's "shockingly inadequate" funding for the Missouri Public Defender system, U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey ruled Monday.
She also said one of the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit doesn't have the legal standing to be a part of it.
But her order didn't end the lawsuit, first filed March 9 in the Cole County Circuit Court but later moved to the federal court at the request of the Missouri attorney general's office.
The other defendants being sued are the state of Missouri, State Public Defender Michael Barrett and four members of the Public Defender Commission who oversee the system's operations.
Tony Rothert, the ACLU of Missouri's legal director, applauded the federal district court "for its ruling recognizing the important claims against the severely underfunded Missouri Public Defender System."
In a release, Rothert added: "For decades, the Missouri State Public Defender has been underfunded, understaffed, and overworked. The state's inability to provide adequate legal representation affects the entire criminal justice system allowing Missourians to sit in jail for far too long, or plea to charges without a trial because they need to get back to their lives and their families."
ACLU-Missouri was joined in the lawsuit by the national American Civil Liberties Union, the MacArthur Justice Center at St. Louis and the Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe law firm.
The class-action suit accused the state of failing for more than two decades :to provide the resources required to adequately represent poor people accused of crimes in Missouri."
In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the U.S. Constitution's Sixth Amendment guarantees Americans the right to have a lawyer represent them and the state must provide that lawyer if the defendant can't afford to pay an attorney.
Missouri law provides a public defender for any indigent defendant accused of a crime where a jail or prison sentence is a possible punishment.
Laughrey's order includes details of Missouri's public defender history, and noted the statewide system "is funded almost exclusively from Missouri's general revenue. The level of funding provided by the state is less than one half of one percent of the state's general revenue."
She cited the 2015-16 state business year, where the public defender trial division handled more than 75,000 cases, spending an average of $356 per case.
And, the judge wrote, since the Public Defender System was created in its current form in 1989, there have been at least 10 independent evaluations of the system, all citing deficiencies in Missouri that, in most cases, were worse than in other states.
The plaintiffs' lawyers told the judge Greitens should remain as a defendant in the entire case because he has the power to withhold funding which the Legislature authorized to be spent - and because he has "a causal link to, and direct responsibility for, the deprivation of rights" to poor people who don't have the proper legal defense because the overburdened public defender system.
But Laughrey dismissed the governor from one part of the suit, writing while Missouri law imposes a number of duties on the Public Defender's Office director and the public defenders under him, as well as courts and law enforcement agencies, there is no state law imposing those duties on Greitens.
However, the governor remains a defendant in other parts of the case.
Laughrey's order also cited the background details of the five individuals who were plaintiffs in the lawsuit - and their claims of spending weeks in jail without being able to raise the bonds set in their cases, while having minimal contact with the public defender system lawyers appointed to represent them.
Laughrey ruled Shondel Church can't stay in the case as a plaintiff, because he now doesn't face a situation where he needs a public defender - even though he complained the system allowed him to spend five months in pretrial detention before he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor theft charge.
But the other four individual plaintiffs "have satisfied the injury-in-fact" test the court must make, the judge said, so they still have the legal standing to be part of the lawsuit.
No one from the governor's or attorney general's offices provided a comment for this story.
Barrett also declined to comment Tuesday on Laughrey's ruling, but said earlier this year: "The state has very few constitutional obligations, but it has instead focused on adding state parks, increasing salaries for judges, and forming committees and task forces to study ad nauseam what we already know. It's time for some leadership."