Budget crisis leaves murder suspects with no attorneys

Two murder suspects in St. Mary Parish are without attorneys because the 16th Judicial District Public Defender’s Office doesn’t have the staff or money to adequately represent them, District Defender Cecelia Bonin said.
In late February, Bonin, who runs the district public defender’s office, said that by the end of March she planned to put all defendants who didn’t have attorneys and weren’t in jail on a wait list due to lack of funding.
But the lack of representation now extends beyond just those defendants not in jail.
There are 86 defendants without representation in St. Mary Parish, and 16 of those defendants are currently incarcerated, Bonin said.
Murder suspects Kirkland D. Craft, 24, of Morgan City and Justin Edward Patterson, 27, of Morgan City both appeared in court Tuesday for attorney status conferences.
Attorney Renee Louviere of the public defender’s office stated that Craft and Patterson needed conflict-free counsel and will be put on a wait list for representation, according to court records. Their trial dates are set for June 20.
Both cases are considered conflict cases, which refer to cases in which multiple defendants need separate attorneys to ensure they are properly represented, Bonin said. That means the public defender’s office must either get paid contract attorneys, public defender attorneys from another parish or pro-bono attorneys, she said.
“It is my obligation to do that, but when you don’t have the money, you cannot perform the obligation,” he said.
A lack of funding and resources is preventing the office from being able to represent Craft and Patterson, Bonin said.
Craft was indicted Dec. 5, 2013, on the charge of first-degree murder in the Oct. 29, 2013, stabbing death of Willie O. Francis. Three other defendants face charges in the same case. One other defendant has pleaded guilty in the case.
Patterson was indicted by a grand jury July 16, 2013, on the charge of second-degree murder in the May 20, 2013, shooting death of Mikki Jay Dauntain. Five other defendants still face charges in this case. Another defendant already pleaded guilty.
Assistant District Attorney Anthony Saleme, who is prosecuting both cases, said prosecutors have been prepared to go to trial for a while, but each defendant has changed attorneys multiple times, delaying the process.
Saleme wants to get both cases to trial “because it’s the right thing to do on both sides,” he said.
“The victim’s entitled to timely justice. A defendant is entitled to a timely trial,” Saleme said.
The district attorney has a “good, working relationship” with the public defender’s office, but the district attorney has a problem with how effectively funds are being spent, Saleme said.
Slightly over 60 percent of the office’s funding comes from local sources, and less than 40 percent of funding comes from the state, Bonin said. At the end of February, Bonin said, since July 1, 2015, the public defender’s office received a 17 percent decrease in local funds and a 7 percent decrease in state funds compared to the prior fiscal year.
Saleme said the state funding issue the district attorney is concerned about is that before the funds even trickle down to the local defender’s office, the state takes a considerable amount of the funding for administrative fees and death-penalty cases.
“A lot of money … doesn’t even make it to the guys in the trenches that we deal with fighting your cases,” Saleme said.
In regard to local funding, all defendants who apply for a public defender are required to pay a $40 application fee unless defendants can’t even afford to pay that fee, but there’s no indication that any of those fees were waived in the past year, Saleme said. Based on the number of cases the public’s defender’s office handled, it should’ve received over $250,000 in the past year in application fees. But the public defender’s office only collected about $22,000 of those fees, he said.
Bonin plans to file a motion to withdraw from all of the cases for which her office is unable to provide counsel, she said.
“When they (attorneys) have too many cases or cases that are extremely complex, serious … they are not able to give all of their clients effective assistance of counsel,” Bonin said.
Saleme hopes to have a hearing soon in front of a judge to address the funding and conflict case issues, he said.
It’s unclear what may happen in the cases, but Bonin said she will probably ask the court to appoint other attorneys for the defendants in need of them.
If the court does not let Bonin’s office out of the cases, Bonin probably will appeal the decision, she said. However, if a judge believes Bonin cannot supply attorneys and does not know where else representation may come from, civil rights attorneys could try to get the defendants out of jail on a writ of habeas corpus, she said. Those attorneys could argue that because the defendants do not have representation, they should be released, Bonin said.
Bonin does not foresee that the public defender’s office will be able to make progress on finding attorneys for defendants who need them any time soon, she said.
“It’s pretty sad. It’s very sad,” she said.