Maine to drop charges, release people from jail in April over public defense failures
Charges other than murder will also be dropped against anyone who has waited more than two months for a lawyer. Those charges could be brought again once an attorney is available.
These unprecedented remedies were ordered by Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy after she recently found that the state has violated the constitutional rights of hundreds of criminal defendants who are constitutionally entitled to a lawyer because they can't afford one on their own.
But before any of this can take place, Murphy is giving the Maine Commission on Public Defense Services, the quasi-state agency in charge of finding lawyers for those who can't afford their own, a month to develop a plan to "provide continuous representation as required by the Sixth Amendment."
"The Court cannot and does not expect miracles," Murphy wrote. "The Defendants can only do what is possible. But it is clear that the Defendants have not been prioritizing finding or providing counsel for the incarcerated Plaintiffs ... who are waiting for MCPDS to do just."
'SIGNIFICANT IMPACT'
The commission has been locked in a lawsuit since 2022 with the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine.
"This is an order that's going to have a very significant impact for this case that's been going on for more than three years," ACLU Chief Counsel Zachary Heiden said in a phone call Friday. "And in that time, the number of people without counsel has grown significantly."
Neither attorney representing the commission, its director nor its chair responded to requests on Friday to discuss Murphy's order.
Murphy wrote that the public interests in this case are "significant" and include "the public interest in a fair, functional, and stable criminal justice system; the public interest in the protection of the liberty interests for all the citizens of Maine who are charged with crimes punishable by incarceration; and the public interest in ensuring that the presumption of innocence is meaningfully protected against the power of the state through the effective assistance of counsel."
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She has scheduled a hearing for April 7 to meet with the various parties, and to begin considering the case of any entitled defendant who is still in jail without a lawyer.
At that hearing, Murphy will order the release of anyone who has been unrepresented for at least 14 days, unless the state can find them an attorney within the following week. They will be released with court-enforced conditions to ensure public safety, she said. Anyone charged with murder will not be eligible.
And she will order charges be dropped against anyone who has waited more than 60 days for a lawyer, with the clock starting Friday.
Murphy's ruling has victims' rights advocates are concerned about the possible repercussions, especially those in domestic violence cases. Roughly 26% of the state's unrepresented cases as of Wednesday were DV-related.
Andrea Mancuso, policy director for the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence, said she finds it unlikely the commission will solve the crisis in the next 30 days when it's failed to do so for several years.
"Victims of crime will bear the consequences of that failure," she said. "This is dangerous for victims. More victims of domestic violence will experience the criminal justice system as unable to help them be safe. This was all completely foreseeable."
DATA IS CHANGING
There were at least 480 criminal cases without an attorney as of Wednesday, according to a list regularly updated by the courts. Roughly 45% of those defendants, in and out of custody, had been on the list for at least two months.
About 110 were in jail, and nearly 40% of those people had been waiting at least 14 days.
During a meeting on Feb. 27, the commission's director Jim Billings said this number was "gross and unacceptable," but that it still pales to the increase in open cases that a dwindling number of defense attorneys have been handling since before the pandemic. There are roughly 6,000 more pending cases now than six years ago, according to court data.
"Even though we have about six hundred people without a lawyer in the state who are otherwise entitled to a lawyer ... that is 10% of this 6,000 number," Billings said. "Which means that the rostered number of attorneys in our program are carrying 90% of those extra cases. I don't think that gets talked about enough."
"It's a wonder that we don't have two or three thousand people unrepresented in our system as it is currently constituted," he said.
Some have complained that there aren't enough lawyers taking cases because the commission's eligibility standards are too strict. Gov. Janet Mills has urged the commission to roll back its regulations, which the commission says were put in place to ensure quality representation.
The ACLU of Maine's lawsuit has actually been divided into two phases, the second of which relates to effective representation. Murphy plans to address those claims later on.
The number of unrepresented defendants has also declined since Murphy heard testimony from the commission in late January. Some say that's a testament to the impact Maine's new public defenders are already having on the crisis.
Toby Jandreau is the supervising "district defender" for the Aroostook County office, where there were only 22 unrepresented defendants as of Wednesday, down from roughly 80 defendants in late December.
"We're seeing fewer of them," Jandreau said at the meeting. "I think with time, it's going to get better."
Defense attorney Robert Ruffner, who represents many of these people temporarily for first appearances, said he's also noticed the decrease. But he doesn't think the commission will suddenly solve a crisis that "has been building for years," and he's sure there will still be people who need to be released or their charges dropped in a month.
"I do not expect that the need for this remedy is going to go away, in the next several months," Ruffner said Friday. "And certainly, the fact that the framework is in place should be ample reason for those in power to ensure that we never end up here again."
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Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store. An angered Trump defended Habba and devised a work-around by firing Grace and installing Habba as the first assistant U.S. attorney, which would effectively put her in charge of the office without needing to get approval from the Senate or the blessing of federal judges. But this piece of creative shuffling has only created more confusion, as lawyers for several defendants are now seeking to get their charges dismissed on the grounds that Habba was not authorized to bring the charges under this new end-around role. And looming over this recent résumé is an ethics investigation into Habba's allegedly improper role in settling a sexual harassment claim of a former employee at Trump's Bedminster golf club. 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Or is New Jersey not really a front in his purported War on Crime but just another battleground in his war on institutional power? Charlie Stile is a veteran New Jersey political columnist. This column originally appeared on You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter. This article originally appeared on Alina Habba enforces Trump's politics and not much else | Opinion
USA Today
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The only thing Alina Habba is enforcing is Trump's vengeance
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Chris Christie – after Murphy was served with a subpoena as part of an investigation into New Jersey's 'sanctuary state' immigration policies. Both lawyers work at the Roseland-based Lowenstein Sandler firm and will be paid $450 an hour, the report said. Leading this spurious inquisition is the acting U.S. attorney-in-limbo for New Jersey, Alina Habba, the eager-to-please former personal lawyer to Trump who has turned the federal plaza in Newark into a circus. She is – or was, at least, when she was secure in the job – probing whether the 'sanctuary state' policies interfered with Trump's immigration crackdown. But according to sources familiar with matter, the subpoena apparently was more concerned with the gaffe Murphy made before a left-wing group in February. Playing to the crowd, a puffed-up Murphy suggested to the audience that he might be sheltering an illegal immigrant at his Middletown home. He then dared the federal immigration authorities to try to get her. That annoyed Tom Homan, Trump's border czar and chief enforcer of the ICE raids, who called Murphy's remarks 'foolish' and vowed to look into them. An aghast Murphy spent the next week walking back his comments, explaining that the person in question had never been to his place, and that this unnamed person was, in fact, in the United States legally but was seeking permanent status. It was a form of crowd-pleasing fabulism that probably overtook Murphy in the heat of the moment. (If telling tall tales were a crime, most of the Trump administration would be on a supervised work-release program.) Murphy administration officials declined to comment on the subpoena and status of the investigation – if there is one. Alina Habba isn't enforcing the law. She's playing politics. 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Both U.S. senators from New Jersey refused to sign off on her nomination, and the state's federal District Court judges voted not to extend her interim rein. They made their vote of no confidence clear by replacing her with prosecutor Desiree Leigh Grace, a registered Republican. An angered Trump defended Habba and devised a work-around by firing Grace and installing Habba as the first assistant U.S. attorney, which would effectively put her in charge of the office without needing to get approval from the Senate or the blessing of federal judges. But this piece of creative shuffling has only created more confusion, as lawyers for several defendants are now seeking to get their charges dismissed on the grounds that Habba was not authorized to bring the charges under this new end-around role. And looming over this recent résumé is an ethics investigation into Habba's allegedly improper role in settling a sexual harassment claim of a former employee at Trump's Bedminster golf club. 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4-minute read Letitia James, the New York attorney general, is going to need to 'lawyer up.' So will Adam Schiff, the California senator, and Jack Smith, the former Justice Department official who investigated President Donald Trump's complicity in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. There's a good chance former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, whom Trump has flippantly accused of treason, also may need to. And here is a name that may surprise you: Gov. Phil Murphy. He's already ahead of them all. The governor, as Politico New Jersey reported last week, retained two top-shelf lawyers — Parimal Garg, his former chief counsel, and Chris Porrino, who served as a state attorney general for former Gov. Chris Christie — after Murphy was served with a subpoena as part of an investigation into New Jersey's 'sanctuary state' immigration policies. Both lawyers work at the Roseland-based Lowenstein Sandler firm and will be paid $450 an hour, the report said. Leading this spurious inquisition is the acting U.S. attorney-in-limbo for New Jersey, Alina Habba, the eager-to-please former personal lawyer to Trump who has turned the federal plaza in Newark into a circus. She is — or was, at least, when she was secure in the job — probing whether the 'sanctuary state' policies interfered with Trump's immigration crackdown. But according to sources familiar with matter, the subpoena apparently was more concerned with the gaffe Murphy made before a left-wing group in February. Playing to the crowd, a puffed-up Murphy suggested to the audience that he might be sheltering an illegal immigrant at his Middletown home. He then dared the federal immigration authorities to try to get her. That annoyed Tom Homan, Trump's border czar and chief enforcer of the ICE raids, who called Murphy's remarks 'foolish' and vowed to look into them. An aghast Murphy spent the next week walking back his comments, explaining that the person in question had never been to his place, and that this unnamed person was, in fact, in the United States legally but was seeking permanent status. It was a form of crowd-pleasing fabulism that probably overtook Murphy in the heat of the moment. (If telling tall tales were a crime, most of the Trump administration would be on a supervised work-release program.) Murphy administration officials declined to comment on the subpoena and status of the investigation — if there is one. Alina Habba isn't enforcing the law. She's playing politics Yet the subpoena over an absurd, custom-made-for-the-right-wing-echo-chamber 'investigation," and the fact that Murphy needed to go an hire two top guns — at taxpayers' expense if at some point they have to do real work — is just another milestone of the absurd Habba circus as the state's top federal law enforcement officer. It's been a debacle since she took the job earlier this year. She began by politicizing the office, telling a right-wing podcaster that New Jersey is ripe for a 'red' takeover. The crime fighter spoke like a political strategist. Then she had Newark Mayor Ras Baraka arrested in May for allgedly trespassing at Delaney Hall, the federally-leased detention center in Newark, during an immigration protest, only to withdraw the charge 10 days later — and draw the withering scorn of the presiding judge, who publicly scolded her for her 'embarrassing retraction.' Both U.S. senators from New Jersey refused to sign off on her nomination, and the state's federal District Court judges voted not to extend her interim rein. They made their vote of no confidence clear by replacing her with prosecutor Desiree Leigh Grace, a registered Republican. An angered Trump defended Habba and devised a work-around by firing Grace and installing Habba as the first assistant U.S. attorney, which would effectively put her in charge of the office without needing to get approval from the Senate or the blessing of federal judges. But this piece of creative shuffling has only created more confusion, as lawyers for several defendants are now seeking to get their charges dismissed on the grounds that Habba was not authorized to bring the charges under this new end-around role. And looming over this recent resume is an ethics investigation into Habba's allegedly improper role in settling a sexual harassment claim of a former employee at Trump's Bedminster golf club. Trump — suddenly — cracks down on crime as his law enforcers spin political animus The irony is that Trump has made a great show lately of cracking down on crime. He authorized a military takeover of the Washington, DC, police department on Monday, vowing to wipe the nation's capital of crime and homelessness — despite a drop in crime rates in the city. He has hinted that he may deploy more federal troops to Democratic-controlled cities. Crime fighting doesn't seem to be his purpose in Newark. He's digging in his heels in support of Habba out of anger at being rebuffed by federal court judges. He feels his prerogative of picking his own people has been once again thwarted by unelected judges. His prerogative just ran smack into long-established institutional guardrails. And as always when he runs into guardrails or norms, he seeks to ignore them or blow them up. Opinion: Ciattarelli breaks with the president on immigration — but in a Trumpian way Habba is simply not qualified One clear reason Habba has collided with those guardrails is that she is clearly not suited for the job. The United States attorney for New Jersey is a powerful and prestigious job that was held by a long roster of venerable prosecutors: Frederick B. Lacy in the late 1960s, the first in a series of important mob-busting prosecutors, like Jonathan Goldstein, a Nixon appointee in the mid-1970s, and Robert Del Tufo until 1980. Chris Christie, who had no courtroom experience before being approved for the post in 2002, was widely accused of targeting mostly Democrats, but there was at least a focus on rooting out political corruption, and he parlayed that record into the governor's office. Regardless of his motives, he put the political class on notice. Alina Habba? Is she the best that Trump can do for a state that where he raised and later bankrupted his casino empire and where he retreats from the Florida heat? Or is New Jersey not really a front in his purported War on Crime but just another battleground in his war on institutional power? Email: stile@
