Missouri’s head public defender is making a loud statement. Citing Governor Jay Nixon’s vetoing of a Missouri Senate Bill back in 2011 which would have provided funding to the already “overburdened public defender system,” Barrett says that Nixon, even while vetoing the bill, acknowledged that the Missouri Public Defender’s office was operating “under significant stresses.” It is five years later and Barrett has decided to make his statement by using a provision in state law that allows him, under extraordinary circumstances, to delegate legal representation to the top lawyer in Missouri—Governor Jay Nixon.
“Providing counsel to poor people who face incarceration is the obligation of the state. It’s not fair to go after private attorneys who are trying to pay the rent when they had nothing to do with contributing to this,” Barrett said in an interview Wednesday.
Barrett never exercised this power before because he thought it was wrong to place the burden of public cases on private attorneys “who have in no way contributed to the current crisis,” he wrote in a letter to the governor dated Tuesday.
A couple of weeks ago, the Missouri State Public Defender’s (MSPD) office sued the state of Missouri for lack of funding.
The lawsuit (PDF) says the Missouri legislature passed an appropriations bill for the 2016-2017 fiscal year that funded multiple government agencies and officials, including salaries and expenses of elected officials, the judiciary, prosecutors and public defenders. The money for indigent defense included a $4.5 million funding increase, Barrett told the ABA Journal in June, which was aimed at paying private counsel to take conflict cases. Previously, the office had relied on public defenders from a neighboring office to handle conflict cases, which was more expensive.
But when the fiscal year began July 1, the lawsuit says, Nixon withheld $3.5 million of the Public Defender Commission’s money. That funding restriction violates the Missouri state constitution, the lawsuit says, by exceeding the governor’s authority. The Office of the State Public Defender is not a state agency from which the governor may withhold funds, the lawsuit says, but an independent office of Missouri’s judicial branch.
Nixon is a Democrat, but his “rising star” status was exposed to be fraudulent with his handling of the police homicide of Michael Brown in Ferguson. Nixon has tried to create a bridge with the Republican Party in Missouri and all that he’s ended up doing is turning his soul to coal. Nixon has tried to work to block Republican LGBT discrimination litigation, and has turned his second term into a battle against the super majority of the Republican Party. Unfortunately, he has burned bridges with the people who would have been his support system by putting them off for too long.
As of yet, I have not utilized this provision because it is my sincere belief that it is wrong to reassign an obligation placed on the state by the 6th and 14th Amendments to private attorneys who have in no way contributed to the current crisis. However, given the extraordinary circumstances that compel me to entertain any and all avenues of relief, it strikes me that I should begin with the one attorney in the state who not only created this problem, but is in a unique position to address it.
Therefore, pursuant to Section 600.042.5 and as Director of the Missouri State Public Defender System tasked with carrying out the State’s obligation to ensure that poor people who face incarceration are afforded competent counsel in their defense, I herby appoint you, Jeremiah W. (Jay) Nixon, Bar No. 29603, to enter your appearance as counsel of record in the attached case.
Get on your dancing shoes, Governor Nixon. You’re going to court.