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* You can find backgroundhere. Tribune…
Senate President Don Harmon, a Democrat from Oak Park, filed the initial bill to create an Office of Public Defense Trial Support last month, but the two-page proposal provided scant details about how a statewide system would work. In addition, public defenders balked at whether the office could operate independently since the bill was an initiative of the Illinois Supreme Court.
Harmon pulled his bill and supporters went back to the drawing board, coming up with a 42-page bill that was filed Monday. The measure lays out in much greater detail how a statewide public defender would be selected and how the office would assist county public defenders throughout Illinois, although a source of funding still has not been identified. […]
The House bill was filed by state Rep. Dave Vella, a Rockford Democrat who once worked as an assistant public defender in Winnebago County. He said the state Supreme Court did a good thing by wanting to give more resources to public defenders, but the problem with the initial bill was that it didn’t resolve issues of judicial oversight of public defenders from the high court and from chief county judges, who appoint those positions. […]
The fact that county public defenders are appointed by judges is a dynamic that can give the judiciary too much control over public defense, Vella said.
In a phone interview, Vella said he planned to introduce another such reform in the near future. He said he’ll use the coming months to hone details of the bill. “We want to have subject-matter hearings in the fall and maybe bring it up in the veto session in October,” he said.
* More…
* Stephanie Kollmann | Illinois legislators should create a statewide system for public defense: According to the National Registry of Exonerations, Illinois leads the U.S. in wrongful convictions. But these cases, terrible as they are, are the tip of the iceberg, illustrating a much more sizable threat lurking below the surface. Illinois has, for too long, failed to safeguard the rights of people accused of a crime, regardless of their access to money. The new pretrial system that launched with the SAFE-T Act was a critical step toward addressing this problem. A fully funded public defense system accountable to the public — not to local politicians and judges — is the next needed reform for this session.
* WTTW | New Bill Aims to Create Statewide Public Defender Office in Illinois: Stephanie Kollmann, policy director at Northwestern University’s Children and Family Justice Center, said it’s likely going to be quite costly for the state to implement new standards for public defense. “Illinois is short about 900 public defense attorneys, and even more than that in terms of investigators and support staff,” Kollmann said.
* Sun-Times | Statewide public defense office would help Illinois counties in need of support: We’d have to go further back in time — to 1949 — for the last time Illinois changed its public defense structure. An upgrade is overdue, especially when 60% of the state’s 102 counties do not have a full-time public defender. In many of those mostly rural counties, it is a judge who appoints a local private practice attorney, typically using flat-fee contracts to represent someone who doesn’t have the means to hire a lawyer.
posted by Isabel Miller
Friday, May 31, 24 @ 11:55 am
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It seems like this advocacy needs more voices from downstate, as that is where the biggest problems occur.
Comment by Three Dimensional Checkers Friday, May 31, 24 @ 12:07 pm
Agree! While the articles linked quote current and former defenders in Winnebago, Champaign, Jackson, and DuPage counties in addition to Cook, defense is underfunded in every one of IL’s 102 counties.
Unfortunately, public defenders outside of Cook who speak out about unconstitutional conditions risk being fired or having their contracts cancelled as a result. That is one of the very first things the state must address!
Comment by Stephanie Kollmann Friday, May 31, 24 @ 12:56 pm