LANSING – In partnership with Cooley Law School, the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission and the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs met on Oct. 24, for a ceremony hosted on Cooley’s Lansing campus.
While the event celebrated the 10-year anniversary of MIDC, LARA Acting Director Marlon Brown also signed into action two additional minimum standards for representing indigent defendants, Standards 6 and 7.
Standard 6 limits an individual public defender to 150 felonies or 400 misdemeanor cases per year, so that attorneys have adequate time to prepare and effectively represent each client, while Standard 7 establishes a minimum standard of qualifications and review for public defenders consistent with the MIDC Act’s requirement that “defense counsel’s ability, training, and experience match the nature and complexity of the case to which he or she is appointed.”
The ceremony included remarks from Brown, MIDC Executive Director Kristen Staley, MIDC Chair Christine Green, Ingham County Judge Tom Boyd, and Cooley Associate Dean Tracey Brame.
It also included LARA Deputy Director Adam Sandoval. Local defense attorneys and Cooley students filled the audience, with a Q&A portion of the ceremony offering insight to the new minimum standards.
“We are expanding the resources that are available to criminal defense attorneys,” said Green. “We are very lucky to have some very courageous criminal defense attorneys in Michigan. Even before we had the standards and the funds with which to carry out the standards, we had some very brave folks who worked for practically nothing. Now we’re expanding the resources available and we’re helping to fill the enormous responsibility that the state has delegated to the local units of government.”
Before the signing, Brown added: “Today marks a significant milestone in the life of the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission, and the work that they are doing. The work of the MIDC is vitally important, and it’s important because we all benefit from a justice system that provides a fair trial to every person facing criminal charges within this state.”
Brame, also the director of the Cooley Innocence Project, spoke on the significance of the standards in relation to her work with the Innocence Project.
“This work is, of course, important to any defendants across the state,” said Brame. “It’s particularly relevant to our work because the better representation our clients have at the trial level coming into the system, the less likely it is that they’ll be wrongfully convicted, and we won’t have to spend years trying to undo the wrongful convictions.”
“I believe the program is so important because there is a need in the community, and not only in the community but also statewide,” said Cooley student Jennel Davoren, who attended the event. “Programs like these are so extraordinary because they help to fill in some of the gaps within the legal system.”
“We’re finally getting to the place where we’ve always been supposed to be,” said Staley. “There’s still work to do, but we’re in a much better place than we ever were before.”
