Allegheny County defender's office problems violate rights of accused, ACLU says
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Poor management and lack of training for new lawyers in the Allegheny County public defender's office are violating the constitutional rights of those accused of crimes and costing the county millions of dollars in extra jail costs, an ACLU report has concluded.
The analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania was released Monday, the same day that two attorneys in the public defender's office faced contempt hearings related to their courtroom behavior. Neither attorney was held in contempt, but the judge in those cases expressed his frustration with a courthouse culture in which "everybody just shows up when they want to."
The ACLU report, entitled "A Job Left Undone," relies heavily on the research done in a 2008 study for the county by a team led by investigator Alan Kalmanoff of the California-based Institute for Law and Policy Planning, a nonprofit policy and research organization.
The Kalmanoff report said that Michael Machen, director of the public defender's office, "has not been trained in how to manage a large defense office, and is not a natural manager. More importantly, he appears virtually disinterested in administration and management, and as a result, holds infrequent meetings, does not assign or oversee supervisors to help manage, and fails almost completely to even try to identify and to address the major system problems that plague his office."
The result "drives excessive client jail time, costing millions, and wastes staffing resources," the Kalmanoff report concludes.
The ACLU's yearlong study has concluded that conditions in the office have gotten worse since 2008 and said that the county is doing the same things that led to a 1996 ACLU lawsuit charging that the public defender's office was failing to provide constitutionally adequate representation to some criminal defendants who could not afford private lawyers. That lawsuit led to a settlement meant to correct problems in the public defender's office with increased funding, staffing, training and management improvements.
First Published October 18, 2011 12:00 am
