Legal News

The 6th Amendment: Another Casualty of the Financial Crisis?

By Dan Slater

It’s no secret that public defender’s offices have been getting creamed by resource shortages. Today, for example, the Wichita Eagle reports that the Sedgwick County public defender’s office has, for the first time, stopped taking new clients. Why? An overwhelming caseload, an underfunded office and a dwindling staff.

New Hampshire Supreme Court Chief Justice John Broderick in his office in Concord, N.H., Sept. 22, 2004. (AP/Jim Cole)

Now the NYT reports that the Superior Court system in New Hampshire will halt jury trials for one month early next year because of a widening state budget crisis. John Broderick, the state’s chief justice, said suspending trials was essential to avoid layoffs in the judicial system, which has already cut $2.7 million from its budget. “Cutting one month of jury trials won’t stop the wheel from turning,” Broderick told the Times. “We would rather do that and have that inconvenience for a month than lay staff people off, which would be a perpetual inconvenience.”

The measure, reports the Times, will save about $73,000, the monthly amount spent on stipends for jurors.

While this may come as welcome news to those looking to avoid jury service in New Hampshire, plaintiffs’ advocates find the news disturbing. “What are [plaintiffs] going to rely on in the interim?” said Ellen Shemitz, executive director of the New Hampshire Association for Justice. “Some of these people have been harmed by the wrongdoing of others, are out of work as a result and are looking to the courts to protect their rights and provide some kind of financial remuneration.”

In perhaps the closest parallel, notes the NYT, Vermont is closing its district and family courthouses a half day per week for the rest of the fiscal year to save $300,000. Vermont stopped holding civil trials for five months in 1990, and New Hampshire effected a one-month suspension in 2001. Other state courts have reportedly tried to do it but have been overturned.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 09, 2008 (boomark / email).