This month’s edition of “The Maine Monitor Radio Hour” is an excerpt from an event The Monitor held at the University of Maine at Augusta in December.
The free event, co-hosted by The Maine Monitor and the Maine Indigent Defense Center, examined the origins of the state’s indigent defense crisis, models in other states and the rollout of Maine’s new public defender offices.
Lawyers from across Maine, along with experts from Massachusetts and New Hampshire, spoke to both the challenges the state is facing as well as potential solutions on the horizon.
Robert Ruffner, director of the Maine Indigent Defense Center, began by saying that whether the state is living up to the Sixth Amendment — which guarantees criminal defendants the right to a speedy trial and the assistance of a lawyer — is in doubt.
“While there have been great changes over the last fifteen to twenty years in how Maine provides representation for our poor and those in need,” he said, “the question still remains: Are we meeting our obligations as a state, and as a society?”
As of mid December, more than 1,200 criminal and child protection cases in the state lacked an attorney. This is up from around 100 indigent cases in August 2023, when Maine Supreme Court Chief Justice Valerie Stanfill described the situation as a “crisis.”
The first panel, moderated by government accountability reporter Josh Keefe, asked how Maine got itself into this situation. Robert Ruffner, along with Ron Schneider, the general counsel and vice president of legal affairs at the University of New England, and Tina Nadeau, executive director of the Maine Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, discussed the ways in which defense lawyers resisted change over the years and how the pandemic exacerbated the attorney shortage.
The panelists also placed blame on prosecutors, saying they needed to bring fewer cases by focusing more on serious crimes and less on simple shoplifting and possession charges.
You can listen to the episode here. Tune in to listen live the first Thursday of every month at 4 p.m. on WERU 89.9 FM.
