(The Center Square) — Maine lawmakers are scrambling to approve funding for the state’s public defender’s office after it ran out of money this week to pay lawyers who represent indigent clients.
The state House of Representatives on Thursday approved an emergency spending bill that would provide the Maine Public Defenders Service with $22 million from the state’s General Fund to pay for its operations through the end of the year. The measure is now before the Senate, which must approve the bill before sending it to Gov. Janet Mills for her signature.
Lawmakers said the funding was necessary to ensure that the state doesn’t run afoul of constitutional requirements to provide counsel to defendants who can’t afford their own attorneys. They pointed to progress in a long-running lawsuit, alleging the state has violated their rights by failing to adequately fund the public defender system.
“We’re making enormous progress, and we cannot allow this critical and successful investment to erode and lose all the progress that we have made towards ensuring justice in our state,” state Rep. Amy Kuhn, D-Falmouth, said in remarks Thursday ahead of the bill’s passage.
Earlier this week, the agency issued a dire warning that it had run out of money and warned that the inability to pay counsel would “cause more Mainers to go without counsel” and put the state in violation of state and federal law.”
“The indigent defense crisis has been festering in Maine for years,” PDS Executive Director Frayla Tarpinian said in a Wednesday statement. “Just as we are beginning to turn a corner to resolve this situation, we find ourselves unable to pay the people who have done the work.
“This is a serious problem that will hurt people and result in fewer attorneys willing to accept these cases and a continued failure of the State to fulfill its obligations,” she added.
The Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services, which includes eight appointed commissioners, provides access to about 280 private practice lawyers who accept court-appointed criminal cases.
Critics say the agency is chronically underfunded, and a recent watchdog investigation revealed that major felony cases have been assigned to private attorneys that didn’t meet the state’s minimum practice standards.
Until 2022, Maine was the only state with no court-appointed lawyers for criminal defendants who can’t afford representation, a right that is guaranteed under the Sixth Amendment.
The system was reshaped several years ago under a proposed settlement between the state and civil liberties groups over a lack of support for indigent suspects in the state’s courts.
A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine on behalf of several criminal defendants alleged that the state is violating state and federal constitutions by failing to provide adequate funding to the public defender program or set and enforce standards for attorneys participating in the program.
