We welcome a push by Cole County judges that will benefit the court system in multiple ways.
The plan involves enlisting the help of attorneys to help defend those who cannot afford an attorney of their own. It would help the perennially understaffed public defender's office and it would help defendants, many of whom are waiting in the Cole County Jail for their cases to proceed. It would also help the judges to clear cases off their dockets quicker.
As we reported earlier this week, Judge Dan Green, at the judges' annual end-of-year meeting, said he had identified 40 attorneys who had regularly practiced in front of all the judges in the courthouse.
He and Judge Jon Beetem have talked with them about working on cases on the wait list, which consists of about 220 cases involving 160 people. The attorneys have agreed to help, and they'll be assigned mostly misdemeanor and simple felony cases, Green said.
Beetem said that when the state public defender heard about the project, they said they thought they could find extra money to hire the outside attorneys.
The Cole County Commission approved an agreement with the state public defender to do this last March. Despite restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, the judges said they saw a reduction in the wait list. Heading into this year, the wait list had more than 300 cases.
"We think this project will help take away more than 40 cases," Beetem said. "The state public defender has extra money to help pay people to defend these cases."
Most people will never need a public defender, and so they're "out of sight, out of mind."
That might be one of the reasons why, nationwide, they've been understaffed, underfunded and overwhelmed for decades in our country.
But the Sixth Amendment to our Constitution gives the accused the constitutional right to proper legal representation. We need to continue to seek improvements to the process, and we believe the Cole County judges' plan is one such step.
News Tribune