An Open Sore

"The Sixth Circuit courtroom, which some New Haven lawyers call 'the Pit,' is a great, dingy box of passions. Two stories high, its flaking ceiling supported by metal stanchions, with tall dusty windows and creaking floors, it is a hell that would have appealed to Charles Dickens. What faces one sees there!--ravaged, jaunty, dazed, disenchanted, raging, resigned. This place is society's open sore."

The words are those of John Hersey, Pulitzer-prizewinning novelist, who has been visiting the busy New Haven criminal court. Last month, in a letter to members of the Forum for Contemporary History,* he wrote angrily about what he had seen, especially about the fate of an important experiment in winning justice for the poor.

In New Haven, indigent defendants have enjoyed an unusual luxury: defense counsel either from the regular public defender's office or from the Legal Assistance Association, which operates with both government and private grants. In the Sixth Circuit, there are only three public defenders, whom Hersey describes as "frightfully overburdened" and likely to settle cases quickly by persuading defendants to plead guilty to reduced charges. The L.A.A., by contrast, has provided 30 defenders, "mostly young idealists," who fight hard and have taken nine cases all the way to the Supreme Court. L.A.A. lawyers have done their share of plea bargaining, but only 1% of L.A.A. misdemeanor defendants during the last quarter of 1970 went to jail, as opposed to 8.3% of the public defenders' clients. Hersey also cites the fact that in 1970 the L.A.A. spent an average of $107 per criminal case, while the public defenders spent less than $19.

Hersey accuses some judges and other officials of regarding the L.A.A. as a nuisance. Earlier this year, a state committee blocked more than $100,000 in anticipated L.A.A. funds and called for a study of alleged irregularities. "The outcome," says Hersey, "can be put succinctly: 1) the investigating committee gave the L.A.A. a clean bill of health; 2) up to now the money has not been restored." New funds, however, were given to the public defenders.

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has required free counsel for any indigent facing jail, the situation in New Haven, says Hersey, represents "a microcosm of what I believe to be a national choice of great urgency . . . Will the courts go forward in New Haven's present direction, preferring the use of public defenders who, working closely with prosecutors, stay abreast of clogged dockets by going in for more and more plea bargaining and less and less client-oriented service? Or will it be seen, eventually, that a defense of the poor fully as vigorous as that given to those who can afford private attorneys is the only way to win over the poor to belief in the rule of law?"

*The year-old publishing enterprise, based in Santa Barbara, Calif., distributes letters from people in various fields to 7,000 biweekly subscribers, as well as a bimonthly journal in which members take issue with recently distributed letters.

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