Miscellaneous

Nevada Gambles on Fairness

By Anne Skove, Esq.

Where else are prosecutors and judges responsible for paying public defenders?

(Thought you'd heard everything, hunh?)

Nevada's public defender system has been in disarray, to say the least. Now an order from on high ensures that the system has independent administrators, performance standards (somewhere a Researcher is crying tears of joy!), and ethically-sized caseloads.

The court also issued standards for determining indigency. Previously, no official screening process was used. Now we have, in writing from the state's highest court, a definition of indigent: a person who is "unable, without substantial hardship to himself or his dependents, to obtain competent, qualified legal counsel on his or her own."

Those receiving public assistance, making less than 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines, incarcerated, or housed in a mental health facility, are presumed to be in the "substantial hardship" category. Those who do not fit into these neat categories but who still claim substantial hardship "will be subjected to a more rigorous screening process" to determine whether they qualify for a publicly-funded defender.

No matter what side of the law/order fence you're on, a saner process is always good news.

See Nevada Supreme Court Mandates Sweeping Changes in Indigent Defense Practices, press release (January 4, 2008), and Nevada High Court Orders Indigent Defense Reforms Brendan Riley, AP, Las Vegas Review-Journal (January 4, 2008).

Full post as published by court-o-rama.org on February 27, 2008 (boomark / email).