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A measure to create a state office to help under-resourced public defenders stalled in the Illinois General Assembly this spring, but supporters of the bill say they will try again when the legislature reconvenes in the fall.
“We’re going to try to filter as many new ideas or as many new perspectives as possible through the committee process so that when it’s all said and done, we have a really good bill,” said state Rep. Dave Vella, D-. Rockford and former Winnebago County Assistant Public Defender said Monday.
Vella introduced a bill last month aimed at addressing the lack of public defense resources in rural areas, many of which do not have public defender offices, and resolving disparities in resources provided to prosecutors and public defenders. counties.
A major problem remains financing, Vella acknowledged. The $53.1 billion state budget awaiting Gov. JB Pritzker’s signature allocates $10 million to the state Supreme Court for county public defenders, the same as in the current budget. Advocates say much more is needed for a statewide public defender’s office to be effective.
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Champaign County Public Defender Elisabeth Pollock said the state’s public defenders have been meeting for months about what a new state office should look like and agreed that $10 million is not enough for a state office to be successful.
“There really has been kind of a historic underinvestment in the public defense sector, in general,” Pollock said.
Vella’s bill was an offshoot of legislation introduced in April by Senate President Don Harmon, an Oak Park Democrat. Public defenders did not support that bill because it was an initiative of the Illinois Supreme Court, raising concerns about whether the state public defender’s office would be free from interference from the judicial branch.
Vella said his bill aims to address that concern by taking away the power of chief county judges to elect public defenders, as they do in most Illinois counties, “because obviously the goal of this is to give autonomy to the public defenders.”
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“We are committed to this. I think it’s a very important investment in the state,” Harmon said May 26 moments after the Senate adjourned for the spring. “That said, when you try to help someone and they tell you that you’re not helping them the right way, it makes me think that maybe we take a step back and work even more closely with our public defenders over the summer to see what we can do. Could you do it better.”
The state Supreme Court’s administrative office for Illinois courts said in a statement on its website that it supports any outcome that ensures that “every indigent defendant in our state has access to effective counsel and every public defender has the necessary resources.” ” to comply with the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution, which requires the right of the accused to have an attorney.
Under Vella’s legislation, a state public defender would be appointed by a group “created and composed of” state public defenders. The state Supreme Court would then approve by majority vote the nominated candidate for a two-year term.
When the term ends, a newly formed 11-member state public defender commission would select a state public defender for a six-year term. The governor would select four of the commission members, the state Supreme Court would pick three and the four state legislative leaders, two from each party, would get one each.
Commission members should have experience defending indigent clients and cannot have received compensation as a judge, elected official, prosecutor, judicial officer or police officer within two years of joining the commission.
The legislation would also create a process for the state public defender’s office to nominate candidates for county-level public defender positions, and the new commission would make the appointments.
DuPage County Public Defender Jeff York believes the new legislation alleviates “many of the concerns” he and other public defenders had compared to the initial legislation, but believes a term limit provision in the bill Vella’s law for certain county public defenders needs further discussion.
“My fear is that the decisions that would be made when running an office are not looked at in the long term. You say, ‘Well, I only have one year left,'” York said. “The decisions you make may not be best for the office and ultimately not so good for clients.”
The state public defender’s office would also provide training to public defenders at the county level and support “with the assistance of attorneys, expert witnesses, investigators, administrative staff and social services personnel” and “maintain a panel” of private attorneys to represent indigent clients. , according to the bill.
The legislation would allow two counties within the same judicial circuit to combine public defender offices. Now, in certain situations, two adjoining counties can share a public defender.
Advocates have pointed to a report from the Sixth Amendment Center, commissioned a few years ago by the state Supreme Court, that said that in 2021, Illinois was among seven states that did not have a state commission, state agency or state official with supervision of public defense services at the procedural level in adult criminal cases.
The report, which focused on nine counties, noted that the state did not have an oversight structure to evaluate whether each county had a sufficient number of attorneys with adequate training and resources to provide effective counsel at every stage of a client’s case. indigent.
Vella said a measure like the one he sponsors “is long overdue.”
“The only thing this really does is put public defenders on equal footing with state attorneys, which is the goal of the process,” Vella said. “Public defenders are at an extreme disadvantage and if we don’t want people to be wrongfully convicted, we need to give them everything we can.”
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