PERFECT STORM of local repercussions to criminal justice and public safety are in the process of being caused by the state’s across-the-board budget cuts.
There are going to be two major categories of victims likely to be swamped by this state-caused tempest, local taxpayers and defendants. Just for the record: Defendants are innocent until proven guilty ... and whole lot of them, with adequate legal representation, are indeed found not guilty. And taxpayers? Well, they’re always the victims of governmental mischief, aren’t they?
The latest pending impact is to the public defender system, the attorneys who defend those unable to afford their own legal representation. In some state judicial circuits that’s estimated to involve up to 95 percent of the criminal cases going before judges. One doubts the numbers would differ markedly for the Rome Circuit.
The hiring freezes, possible furloughs, lessened use of expert witnesses and investigators will both slow the wheels of justice and make them sound a lot more squeaky.
Add that to similar 6 percent slashes imposed on prosecutors — with the governor already muttering dire warnings of perhaps taking it to 10 percent — and it is clear that cases will move through the system much more slowly.
AS FOR THE JUDGES, their workload just increased as well. Senior judges (retirees) who handled a lot of civil litigation have been erased. That means the circuit judges will be picking up that load, hence further reducing ability to expedite criminal matters.
Interestingly, it is well known that during harder overall economic times — what’s causing the state’s revenue shortfalls to begin with — the criminal workload increases because of more shoplifting, bad checks, burglaries and similar. So, usually, do DUI cases soar as some citizens try to drown their economic sorrows.
Further throwing monkeywrenches in the gears of the swift justice that all Americans are assumed to be owed is the outright elimination of criminal labs/pathologists in this corner of the state. This means everything goes to Atlanta where, as in the past, results will take weeks, months ... sometimes even years ... to get back and particularly so on “routine” cases.
And into this “perfect storm” mix also sail items such as Juvenile Court Judge Tim Pape asking the county for an additional $28,000 for indigent defense and interpreters for state custody hearings where parents and children must have separate representation and the county’s sizable populations of deaf and Spanish-speaking residents can require interpreters to be present.
MOST GREATER Romans can probably grasp that all this will slow justice, slow trials, be unfair to defendants and particularly so those who are innocent but incarcerated awaiting trial. It will also, and inevitably, cause law enforcement and prosecutors to think twice before pursuing cases, particularly any depending on yet-unseen evidence from the crime labs.
What citizens may not yet understand — and this is going to be true not only for Floyd County but for every state jurisdiction — is how all this state dumping of what it sees an expendable expenses will be largely transferred to county commissions, themselves already facing similarly tight budgets.
Perhaps the state, despite the General Assembly’s “tough on crime” pose that is only skin deep, can afford to let justice fray further. Hometown officials trying to actually protect hometown constituents cannot. They will have to try to rob Peter (let’s say road repair) in order the pay Paul (the court system). At some point, unable to rob Peter further, they will have to consider raising taxes.
That last likelihood is made even more likely because of the unseen (for the moment) side effects of the state’s budget cuts — unseen by the state, in any case, or just deliberately ignored.
LET’S SAY that a defendant — guilty or innocent — has to spend an extra 100 days in jail awaiting trial because of all this. One day in jail costs local taxpayers an estimated $30 to $40 per day. That would mean this state-inflicted delay would cost hometown wallets at least $3,000 — times how many piling up in the pipeline awaiting the rendering of justice?
This is an added expense not there before when things moved more expeditiously.
That’s one heck of a way to bail out the state’s leaky boat ... by throwing buckets of new taxes at local taxpayers already desperately treading water.
There are, and will be, far more repercussions to this deliberate degradation to the speed of rendering justice. But perhaps the most interesting point is one not as obvious.
The state’s budget cuts are hitting everything — parks, health care and so forth. But those other elements are not separate and co-equal branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. The way slashes are being piled up in the operation of the court structure — independent, free standing and totally without budget-making power such as the legislative and executive have — should make citizens wonder if the justice system isn’t being picked on just a little bit.
COME TO THINK of it, those public defender costs being reduced don’t come from taxes at all but are largely generated by court fees. Guess the state must be planning on diverting those fees to other uses it sees as more important than guaranteeing an adequate legal defense to its citizens.
Sure would like to know what those might be — paying to have the governor and a party of 20 pals go to Europe to “sell” Georgia at an estimated cost of $100,000?
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