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Sixth Amendment
Only 1 out of 5 defendants in this Mississippi county get court-appointed lawyers before indictment
The right to counsel is “tenuous” in a small Mississippi justice court in Yalobusha County, Mississippi, where two judges appointed lawyers for felony defendants in only 20% of the cases opened in 2022, according to an investigative report. (Image from Shutterstock)
The right to counsel is “tenuous” in a small Mississippi justice court in Yalobusha County, Mississippi, where two judges appointed lawyers for felony defendants in only 20% of the cases opened in 2022, according to an investigative report.
Experts estimate that the national rate of lawyer appointments is 80% in felony cases, at some point in the legal process, according to the article by the Marshall Project, which was produced in partnership with the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal and ProPublica.
Felony defendants make their first appearance in justice court or municipal court in Yalobusha County, where judges are tasked with evaluating whether the defendant can pay for a lawyer and to appoint one if necessary. A review of court files in the county found 63 cases in which defendants appeared before a justice court judge in 2022. Two cases were excluded because it was unclear whether a listed lawyer was appointed or hired.
The appointment rate in the remaining cases was 20%. In 61% of the cases, the defendant had no attorney, whether privately hired or publicly funded, the article reports.
The cases move to a circuit court after an indictment. Out of 15 cases now in the circuit court that were initiated in 2022, only four defendants received appointed lawyers in justice court. Thirteen defendants got court-appointed lawyers in the circuit court, the article reports.
The two justice court judges, Judge Trent Howell and Judge Janet Caulder, did not comment on their appointment rates to reporters working on the investigative report.
Caulder said, however, that she tells defendants about their right to a lawyer. But she doesn’t ask whether they can afford one, and she doesn’t appoint one unless they request it.
“I don’t question them. I don’t try to force indigency on them,” she said.
Howell said he has a duty to spend taxpayer money wisely. He is more likely to appoint a lawyer if a defendant is in jail, he said. In one case in which a woman accused of shooting and wounding her stepfather, Howell said, “She just didn’t strike me as an indigent person.”
“Mississippi is among the worst states in the country in providing attorneys for poor criminal defendants,” the article reports. “It’s one of a handful of states where public defense is managed and funded almost entirely by local governments, and the way they do so varies greatly from county to county. Defendants in some places see appointed lawyers quickly and remain represented thereafter; elsewhere, sometimes right over the county line, defendants can wait months just to see a lawyer or can go long periods without having one at all.”
The Mississippi Supreme Court has issued several rules intended to improve the process.
“But it is up to locally elected judges to carry out those mandates, and there’s no oversight to make sure they’re doing it right,” the article reports.
Lisa M. Wayne, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told the Marshall Project that Mississippi is an outlier.
“We don’t hear from many places other than Mississippi of judges simply ignoring or deferring the question of whether the right to counsel applies,” Wayne said.
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