The U.S. Justice Department on Friday stepped into ongoing litigation to express concern about legal representation for juveniles in a South Georgia judicial circuit.
The agency’s civil rights division, in a 22-page court filing, told a Fulton County judge he should find the constitutional rights of juvenile defendants are being violated if necessary legal safeguards are not in place.
Last year, lawyers for the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta and the Washington law firm Arnold & Porter filed suit against the four-county Cordele Judicial Circuit. Among the complaints: juveniles were being denied effective representation or were, at best, provided “assembly line justice.”
For too long, the promise of fairness for young people accused of delinquency has gone unfulfilled in courts across the country, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.
“Every child has the right to a competent attorney who will provide the highest level of professional guidance and advocacy,” Holder said. “It is time for courts to adequately fund indigent defense systems for children and meet their constitutional responsibilities.”
When the lawsuit was filed in January 2014, Cordele’s public defender office did not have a juvenile division as required by law. Children showing up in court often found there were no public defenders to represent them, yet their cases proceeded to resolution, the suit said.
The circuit has since hired a contract lawyer to represent juveniles, state attorneys said at a recent court hearing.
But that may not be sufficient, the Justice Department said.
“When faced with severe structural limitations, even good, well-intentioned lawyers can be forced into a position where they are, in effect, counsel in name only,” the filing said.
If lawyers do not have the time or resources to serve as effective advocates or do not receive adequate training or supervision, then they inevitably fail to meet the minimum requirements of legal representation, the agency said. “These conditions lead to de facto non-representation.”
Stephen Bright, the Southern Center’s senior counsel, said Cordele’s contract defender resolves many cases when children report to court for the first time. After a roughly 15-minute consultation with the lawyer, juveniles then stand before a judge and admit to the charges, he said.
“This is not even token representation,” Bright said. “The children are simply are not represented.”
Vanita Gupta, acting assistant attorney general of the civil rights division, said underfunded public defender systems across the country are failing to provide children with effective legal representation.
“Children who depend on these failing systems often get the poorest representation, relegating them to second-class status in our courts,” Gupta said. “The systemic deprivation of counsel for children cannot be tolerated.”
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