In Caribou, Maine last month Judge Stephen Nelson faced a constitutional dilemma. Prosecutors had charged a defendant with aggravated drug trafficking, furnishing and possession nearly three weeks earlier, but he still didn’t have an attorney, the Maine Monitor reports. “The court finds that there has been a violation of his constitutional rights to counsel,” Nelson said. “It’s been an unreasonable period of time. This is a very serious case.” Noting the defendant did not have a significant criminal history, the judge lowered his bail to $5,000, but as of July 3, the defendant was still in custody. The proceedings unfolded shortly after a similar dilemma in Lewiston led to a tragedy. On June 15, days after Lewiston District Court Judge Sarah Churchill lowered Leein Hinkley’s bail and allowed his release from jail because he didn’t have a lawyer, Hinkley went to the Auburn home of a former girlfriend, violating his conditions of release, and started a fire that took a man’s life and destroyed several houses. Hinkley was killed in a police shootout.
The response was impassioned and swift, with police and the governor issuing harsh criticism of the judge’s decision, and colleagues in the judicial system coming to her defense, pointing to the state’s ongoing shortage of defense lawyers as the root of the issue. As of July 3, more than 650 people charged with crimes in Maine were unable to afford a lawyer and waiting for the state to provide one, according to a Maine Monitor analysis of court data. At least 150 were in custody, languishing in jail while presumed innocent and waiting for the legal counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Once a week, the defendants in custody without an attorney are brought before a judge, often by Zoom from a county jail, for a check-in called a seven-day review, which the trial court chief judges started in November. Some have appeared at these hearings week after week, and a few have attended for months, only to be told that no attorney is available.
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