Indefensible
Touting his progressive bona fides at Columbia University on Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman boasted: “Probably every month or so, we have done something that no one has ever done before. . . . We change the way people are doing business and the way that governments are operating.”
Perhaps that’s true for the Wall Street investment houses, mortgage lenders and debt collectors that have been profitable targets for Schneiderman. But it’s not so for the State of New York.
For all of his almost four-year term, the A.G. has battled a suit filed on behalf of thousands of citizens who are being denied their rights in court.
Schneiderman inherited the case from his predecessor as attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, who as governor maintained the stonewall in the face of overwhelming evidence of widespread wrongful deprivation of liberty.
Yet there has been hardly a peep from liberal Democrats, who screamed about stop-and-frisk, that two of their leading lights have countenanced extensive constitutional abuses.
Only the New York Civil Liberties Union, waging the suit with the pro bono help of the Schulte Roth & Zabel law firm, has stayed true to its flag.
As the Supreme Court declared in 1963, the Sixth Amendment requires that anyone accused of a crime who cannot afford legal fees must be given a lawyer free of charge.
Yet day in and day out, in courtrooms on Long Island and upstate, low-income defendants appear before judges at bail hearings with no attorney by their side — and wind up in jail as a result.
What legal advice many of these indigent defendants ultimately get comes from overbooked public defenders juggling sometimes two or three times the recommended maximum caseload.
Often, clients take life-changing plea deals — that can cost them liberty, jobs, homes and even custody of their kids — based on rushed courtroom hallway talks. Forget real investigation or expert testimony. “Law & Order” this is not.
A report commissioned by then-Chief Judge Judith Kaye found in 2006 that New York often provides “an unconstitutional level of representation.” Kaye called the situation a “crisis.”
The grim facts presented in the Kaye report and by the NYCLU are not in serious dispute. The state’s own chief of indigent legal services says the fragmented system — run by counties with little supervision or funding from Albany — falls at least $105 million short of what it minimally needs.
Regardless, Schneiderman and Cuomo fought to squelch the lawsuit on procedural grounds rather than enact reforms to ensure equal justice.
After seven years — and who knows how many victimizations — the case is set for trial on Tuesday. All of a sudden, the governor and attorney general have entered negotiations toward a settlement that should have happened long ago.
Aides argue that Schneiderman, who pushed for reform while in the state Senate, has been duty-bound to defend Cuomo’s position in court. This is true — up to a point.
As elected attorney general, Schneiderman’s ultimate clients are the people of New York, and his overriding obligation is to root out civil rights violations, not fight so as to perpetuate them.