Legal office of lawyers, justice and law concept : Wooden judge gavel or a wood hammer and a soundboard used by a judge person on a desk in a courtroom with a blurred brass scale of justice behind.
NATCHEZ, Miss. – Adams County supervisors Thursday reviewed Circuit Judge Lillie Blackmon Sanders’ proposal to create an county public defenders office and hire five lawyers to represent criminal defendants who can’t afford their own attorneys.
This would replace the current system of retaining nine private attorneys the court calls on to be defense counsels paid by the county.
Sanders recommended about $300,000 be annually appropriated by supervisors to pay the five public defenders, provide fringe benefits and to have offices. No decision was made by the Board of Supervisors on creating the legal defense agency.
As proposed, Sanders would appoint a chief public defender, who would hire four other attorneys to represent defendants accused of crimes in Adams County Circuit Court. Sanders is the court’s senior judge. Debra Blackwell is the other judge.
The private attorneys now retained as public defenders are paid $2,800 a month by the county.
The proposal to create the public defenders office comes after a controversy arose last month when Sanders approved $800-a-month pay raises for the attorneys. However, two of the attorneys are related to Sanders and could not be given the raise unless approved by Blackwell. She declined to do so.
Mississippi is the only state in the country that leaves judges to select, supervise and set the budgets for indigent defense lawyers, according to a 2018 report submitted to the Mississippi Legislature.
The report, done by a special task force created by the Legislature, cited a recent study of public defenders in Adams and nine other Mississippi counties.
A key funding of that study was that Mississippi had “no method to ensure that its local governments are fulfilling the state’s constitutional obligation to provide effective assistance of counsel to the indigent accused in felony cases in its trial courts.”
The report can be read by going to: www.ospd.ms.gov/Mississippi%20Public%20Defender%20Task%20Force%20Final%20Report.pdf
