Bennett J. Baur is the chief public defender for the state of New Mexico.
Just a bit of background so we are all on the same page, a public defender is an attorney that is appointed to represent people in court that cannot afford their own lawyers. These defendants have a legal right to a lawyer via the sixth amendment, which requires "assistance of counsel" for all accused persons in "all criminal prosecutions," this implies the right.
New Mexico is a state that relies heavily on its revenue from oil and gas to fund many of its governmental processes. With a recent slump in the prices of oil and gas, New Mexico has been losing money, meaning less money from the state budget is allocated to the Law Offices of the Public Defender, despite the fact that crime has increased in several counties, namely the city of Hobbs Lea County, where the number of felony charges had nearly doubled since 2011 (New York Times, Santos).
Baur has stated, according to a report by The NM Political Report, that an "overworked and underpaid public defender office could not provide adequate representation," and that "doing so would violate the constitutional rights of the defendant," (NM Political Report, Lyman).
With all of this on the table, Baur told his lawyers in October of 2016 to stop accepting clients in Hobbs, for to represent them poorly due to staff constraints is against their rights. This also sent a message to the court and prosecutor systems which had also been dealing with budget issues. Soon thereafter Baur was found in contempt of court by a district judge and his offices were forced to take on new cases once again (New York Times).
Baur and his lawyers, however, switched up their strategy. Now, they ask the judges to dismiss these cases without prejudice, though this means that "the cases could still be filed later on," (NYT).
There is a lot about this dispute that must be noted:
-public defenders serve poorer people that cannot afford counsel, meaning this is disproportionately people of color, for whatever societal reasons.
-perceptions of criminals and "tough on crime" laws make people reluctant to see their tax dollars go to the office of a public defender. A quote from lawyer Tom Clark in a different article by the NM Political Report depicts this honestly, saying "'who wants to give money to defend child molesters,'" and that is tricky aspect of our legal system (NM Political Report, Lyman). The system is all or nothing since it is based on equality, otherwise we delve into a time-consuming dialogue about semantics and who truly is or is not worthy of a lawyer.
-PUBLIC as well as GOVERNMENTAL FAVOR has always been towards the offices of the district attorney over the offices of the public defender for similar reasons as mentioned in the last point. New Mexico state budgets from all the way back to 2003 show that the district attorney received, on average, 26% more funding that the public defender, even as budgets increased for both (NM Political Report).
This should not be a discussion about how we perceive crime but rather how true to fairness do we want our criminal justice system to be.
Baur has also suggested that we "look at the things we consider crimes," implying that lower level crimes should be more easily dismissed with a warning or a fine than becoming a full blown case that further backlogs these lawyers, especially if they did not hurt anyone (NM Political Report).
New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/us/new-mexico-lawyer-shortage.html
NM Political Report - http://nmpoliticalreport.com/133076/chief-public-defender-held-in-contempt-after-turning-down-cases-says-office-cant-afford-it/
- http://nmpoliticalreport.com/134096/overloaded-public-defenders-office-was-years-in-the-making/
I had the honor of getting to interview Chief Bennett Baur during my time in New Mexico and really appreciated his thorough view of the criminal justice system and thoughts on Santa Fe.
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