Political Illusions of the Cajun Mafia

Last year, in its report “System Overload: The Costs of Under-Resourcing Public Defense,”
(http://www.justicepolicy.org/research/2756 (http://www.justicepolicy.org/research/2756)), the Justice Policy
Institute described a system in “chronic crisis” that serves four out of five people charged with crimes but
“saddles defenders with excessive workloads and inadequate resources.”
The report cited a finding from the Census of Public Defense Offices (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?
ty=dcdetail&iid=401), conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, that nearly three-quarters of countybased
public-defender offices lacked enough attorneys to meet national caseload standards set by a U.S.
Department of Justice advisory board. State-based defender offices had a median 67 percent of the lawyers
needed to meet the guidelines.
During oral arguments in the case last month, Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that prosecutors were paid —but
not defense attorneys.
“Why isn’t that a deliberate choice?” she asked.
The NACDL brief, which looked at indigent-defense systems within Louisiana and Calcasieu Parish, noted that
in the year Boyer was indicted, the public-defender’s office had eight attorneys on a 17-member staff and a
budget of $1.2 million while the district attorney’s office had 17 attorneys on an 88-member staff and a budget of
$3.7 million.
One Lawyer—Or Two?
But Justice Antonin Scalia said that, if Boyer had been interested in a speedy trial, he could have waived state
defense rules and proceeded to trial with one lawyer, which is all the U.S. Constitution requires.
Sigler also argued that Boyer didn’t need to wait.
“You could either demand what Louisiana in its generosity has given to capital defendants, namely the right to
two counsels,” she said. “Or you could demand your right to speedy trial. That was your choice.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked whether Boyer knew his options.
“Did anyone ever tell this man with an eighth-grade education what his rights were?” she asked.
While there was some disagreement among the court about the scope of the case, only Scalia seemed to
advocate going beyond the general issue: whether the state is responsible for a Sixth Amendment-speedy trial
violation if a case is delayed because the state didn’t pay for indigent defense.
If the court sticks to that general issue and finds that the state is responsible, the case could be remanded back
to a Louisiana court, which would examine the specifics of the case and determine, for instance, whether both
of Boyer’s convictions, for murder and armed robbery, should be affected.
Mary Schmid, senior counsel for the Constitution Project (http://www.constitutionproject.org/), which also filed
an amicus brief (http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/supreme_court_preview/briefs/11-
9953_pet_amcu_const-proj.authcheckdam.pdf) on Boyer’s behalf, believes that, if the court rules in Boyer's
favor, states could end up paying for indigent defense in a more timely manner—resulting in fewer long-delayed
cases and perhaps avoiding wrongful criminal convictions.
Legal cases suffer from the passing of time because witnesses die, evidence can be lost and memories fade,
she noted.
“While the question the Court is asked to decide in Boyer is relatively narrow, its implications for the criminal
justice system are extraordinarily important,” she said.
Indigent defendants whose day in court is delayed by unpaid or overworked defense counsel would be greatly
impacted if the Court held that the state isn’t to blame for the delays in Boyer, Reimer said.
“There would be no remedy for defendants, who would just have to sit and wait,” he said.
Katy Reckdahl, a former reporter for The Times-Picayune newspaper, is a New Orleans-based freelance
journalist in who has reported for The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor and The Lens, a local,
online investigative news site. She welcomes comments from readers.