Maine Beacon - Maine is the only state in the country that relies completely on hiring private attorneys to represent defendants without the ability to pay legal costs. With a new report warning that the state is failing to protect the legal rights of its poorest residents, pressure is now mounting on the legislature to adopt significant changes.
In other states and cities, representation of low-income defendants is handled by a public defender office, which Maine lacks entirely. That absence means hired attorneys may have a financial incentive to overbill the state and spend less time on their cases, which can result in poor defendants accepting harsher guilty pleas or paying higher court penalties, according to a report issued Thursday to state lawmakers by the Sixth Amendment Center in Boston.
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