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Missouri Gov. Nixon, a practicing attorney, ordered to represent indigent by public defender’s office

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon slashed the public defender program budget in his state, now he may be forced to represent a poor defendant himself.
Jay Nixon

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The head of Missouri’s public defender system says he is appointing Gov. Jay Nixon to handle a case in protest of declining funding.

Michael Barrett, the director of Missouri’s Public Defender System, wrote in a letter this week that repeated budget cuts have left his office unable to hire enough public defenders for people who can’t afford representation. The letter to Nixon was posted this week on the office’s website.

Excerpt from letter:

Seven years ago, your office vetoed Senate Committee Substitute for Senate Bill No. 37, which would have provided caseload relief to an overburdened public defender system. In denying that relief, you acknowledged that MSPD was operating “under significant stresses” and committed to working with the General Assembly to fix the problem, but never did.

Instead, you have repeatedly cut funding for an indigent defense system that continues to rank 49th in the U.S., with a budget that the consumer price index indicates has less value now than it did in 2009. After cutting $3.47 million from public defense in 2015, you now cite fiscal discipline as reason to again restrict MSPD’s budget, this time by 8.5%. However, and despite claims that revenues are considerably less than expected, you did not restrict a single dollar from your own budget, and the average withhold from 12 of you executive agencies does not even add up to one half of one percent (.47%).

This action comes even after the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice found that poor black children are being systematically deprived of their rights in Missouri due in large part to the lack of public defenders. Choosing the wake of that report to further debilitate the very organization that ensures an equal system of justice only adds to the escalating sentiment that the poor and disenfranchised do not receive a fair shake in Missouri’s criminal justice system.

Barrett says the law allows him to appoint any Missouri attorney to secure representation for indigent clients. He says he’s starting with Nixon, a former attorney general. Barrett wrote that Nixon “not only created this problem, but is in a unique position to address it.”

Excerpt from letter:

As Director of the Public Defender System, I can only hire attorneys when I have the funding to do so. Because you have restricted that funding, MSPD must hold a significant number of vacant positions open to have the necessary funds to make it though the fiscal year, a task which is exacerbated by a 12% increase in cases over the year prior. To avoid having to close one or more offices, the remaining option is to consider the use of Section 600.042.5, which gives the Director of the Public Defender System the authority to “[d]elegate the legal representation of any person to any member of the state bar of Missouri.”

Nixon’s office didn’t immediately respond to an email Thursday from The Associated Press seeking comment.

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