Hochul’s justice system budget skimps on defense
In unveiling her state budget in February, Gov. Kathy Hochul highlighted the fact “that our criminal justice system was absolutely paralyzed during the pandemic” and is “still clogged with backlogs, denying justice to far too many.”
Gov. Hochul is right. But unfortunately,
▶ Mark Funk is the president of the Chief Defenders Association of New York. the proposed executive budget fails to address the problem, and it would further deny justice to thousands of New Yorkers.
Yes, the governor proposed nearly $100 million for district attorneys, an increase of $87 million over last year. But she allocated a comparatively paltry $7.5 million in “aid to defense” for public defenders. This follows $40 million provided to district attorneys last year that was likewise unmatched for public defenders. The budget also increased the hourly rate for “18-b” attorneys (private attorneys that accept cases on an ad hoc basis) but failed to fund the proposed long-needed raise, leaving it to the counties to foot the bill.
The governor, as well as the courts, understand that both prosecutors and defenders are struggling. Like others through the pandemic, many staff members have resigned, particularly as the backlog in the courts increased their caseload. Furthermore, additional staffing and technological resources are required for both sides to collect and share digital evidence to meet new obligations under the law.
For decades, New York had draconian statutes governing the release of evidentiary materials, which contributed to New York’s dreadfully high number of wrongful convictions. Albany was right to overhaul the discovery laws in 2019 to assure that anyone accused of a crime was provided the evidence against them. This change brought New York in line with 47 states that had implemented fair and open discovery years earlier.
While an allotment of funds is earmarked to address these additional needs for district attorneys, the budget provides nothing for the defense offices ▶
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those in white neighborhoods.
It is obvious why this routine inequality is important. Many of our peer democracies hold their elections on Sundays, when most voters do not have to go to work. We have our elections on Tuesdays, when many people do not have the luxury of time. Some potential voters are not able to wait in long, slow-moving lines and have to give up. Proportionally more of these frustrated would-be voters are Black and Latino.
This would be an easy problem to fix, if officials wanted to fix it: Put more poll workers and voting stations in Black and Latino neighborhoods. Yet it doesn’t happen.
Republicans point the finger at Democratic mayors and city councils, but the distribution of election resources — such as early-voting drop boxes, for example — is often controlled by GOP governors, secretaries of state and legislatures. State governments where Democrats have recently won control, such as Minnesota and Michigan, by contrast, are moving forward with plans to eliminate disparities and expand voting access.
Some voting obstacles would be cleared away by the For the People Act, one of the two major pieces of election-reform legislation that Democrats tried, and failed, to pass in the last Congress when they controlled both the House and the Senate. The other bill — the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act — would restore key parts of the original Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority struck down in 2013.
Before that ruling, states with a history of racial discrimination in voting — basically, states across the South — had to submit all proposed changes in election rules for federal review before they could be implemented. If the changes were found to have disparate and prejudicial impact on minorities, they could be disallowed.
As soon as that Supreme Court decision came down, Gop-led states rushed to implement voter-id laws, gerrymander districts to dilute Black voting power, purge voter rolls and take other actions they knew would disproportionately burden African Americans and other minorities.
It is true that Black voters have overcome these obstacles and voted in historic numbers, standing in line for hours, if necessary, to make their voices heard. But that does not make voter suppression any less unfair or undemocratic. Arguments about “Jim Crow 2.0” are premature when vestiges of “Jim Crow 1.0” remain with us.