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Charlotte Amalie
Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Superior and Supreme Courts, Public Defender Present Budgets

Ninety percent of the people who use the Public Defender’s services plead guilty, said Michael Joseph, head of the Public Defender Administration Board, as he helped make the case for the office’s budget at Monday’s meeting of the Legislature’s Finance Committee.

Of the remaining 10 percent, Chief Public Defender Debra Smith-Watlington said that in more than 80 percent of those cases, the defendants are acquitted.

While the Public Defender’s Office would like a budget of $3.9 million for the upcoming year, Smith-Watlington said given the need to cut the budget, she asked for $3.5 million. Government House suggested a $3.3 million budget.

“The amount is woefully inadequate,” she said of the suggested budget.

Smith-Watlington said many times throughout the two-hour meeting that her office is at a bare-bones level to handle its 1,100 cases a year. Half of those currently in progress are felonies, and 31 are murder cases.

She and others on her team said the staff is stretched very thin, with weekends and late hours the norm.

She said the attorneys currently have a case load of 75 to 127 cases per month to handle.

Of the 35 staff members, the office has five trial attorneys in the St. Thomas/St. John District and six on St. Croix. Additionally, Smith-Watlington said there is one appellate attorney for both districts. There are two investigators on St. Croix and one on St. Thomas. Each district has a paralegal. The rest of the positions are administrator and other support staff.

“We need to look at crime as a public health issue,” Sen. Janette Millin Young said, suggesting that this would help decrease the caseload.

Later, Joseph said that if the office is forced to cut its budget further, it will have to sue the government because it has a constitutional mandate to defend indigent people accused of crimes.

Young told Smith-Watlington and later Superior Court Presiding Judge Darryl Donohue and Supreme Court Chief Justice Rhys Hodge that even if they indicate they’re legally obligated to provide services, when there’s no money, there’s no money.

She told Donohue, Hodge and their staffs that when it became clear the economy was on a downslide the private sector began cutting. She said that didn’t happen with government departments and agencies.

“The law requires the judiciary to be adequately funded,” Hodge responded.

Donohue said earlier that without proper funding of the courts, citizens may “resort to self help.”

Superior Court has a cash reserve of $4 million. Donohue asked the Legislature to give its approval to use the funding to fill in the gaps in its budget since it appears certain that the agency won’t get all the money it says it needs.

Hodge asked for a Supreme Court budget of $7.4 million for fiscal year 2012. Donohue wants $31.7 million to run Superior Court in 2012.

Hodge told the senators that he plans to ask the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals to remove the mandate that all Supreme Court cases be reviewed by the 3rd Circuit. That provision was put in place when the Supreme Court was formed nearly five years ago, with a provision that the 3rd Circuit look into the matter five years into the 15-year review process indicated when the court was established.

“I’m optimistic the 3rd Circuit review will be favorable,” Hodge said.

Both Hodge and Donohue threw out reams of facts and figures. According to Donohue, a jury sequestered for a two-week trial costs the court $80,000 to $100,000.

Additionally, he said that the court pays to buy the traffic tickets given to the Police Department to issue, but the fines go into the general fund.

According to Donohue, the Rising Stars steel pan program, formed to help youths out of the juvenile justice system, serves 300 students across the territory.

Hodge told Sen. Carlton Dowe, who chaired the meeting, that the territory had no shortage of attorneys.

In addition to Dowe and Young, Sen. Sammuel Sanes, Sen. Celestino White and Sen. Nerida Rivera-O’Reilly attended the meeting.

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