Pennsylvania chief justice: Federal Community Defender Office overburdens state courts
Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ronald Castille lashed out at the Federal Community Defender Office in an opinion on Wednesday that said the group “insinuates itself into the role of de facto statewide defender in capital cases.”
In a single-justice opinion, Castille said the Philadelphia-based office had not responded to a claim that it was improperly diverting federal grant money that is supposed to support federal habeas appeals to support its “private capital case agenda” in state post-conviction appeals. The Associated Press and the Legal Intelligencer have stories. How Appealing links to coverage and the opinion (PDF).
The Federal Community Defender Office “insinuates itself into the role of de facto statewide defender in capital cases, claiming to this court that it is acting solely as a privately funded entity which need not answer to any Pennsylvania authority, and then claims, when put to the proof, that it is effectively a `federal officer’ and cannot be asked for an accounting,” Castille wrote.
“The reality is that the FCDO has deliberately overburdened the state courts with its resources and tactics,” Castille said, “and its tentacles can be found in other stages of litigation as well, including amicus work on behalf of foreign governments and their citizens who commit murders in the United States.”
Castille wrote his opinion in connection with the capital appeal of Mark Spotz, convicted of killing three women, the Intelligencer says. The FCDO had sought Castille’s recusal after the justice previously criticized the group, but the FCDO later withdrew the request.
Castille said that as long as the FCDO is not candid about its authorization and funding, it should be banned from representing capital defendants in Pennsylvania, absent a federal court order in a specific case. “We are not obliged to indulge or countenance a group which manipulates and abuses the judicial process in Pennsylvania in the hopes of achieving a global political result that it has failed to secure through the political process,” Castille said. The solution, Castille said, is to provide proper training and funding for capital case advocacy in the state in place of the FCDO.
The Federal Community Defender’s Office is a division of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, which issued a statement to the Associated Press. The statement said FCDO lawyers have obtained new trials or sentences for an extraordinary number of defendants.
“With the exception of one or two clients who gave up the right to fight their cases, none of its Pennsylvania state capital clients has ever been put to death,” the statement said. “That record by itself refutes any charge that the FCDO engages in frivolous litigation.”
The Defender Association of Philadelphia was previously in the news when a death-row inmate told the U.S. Supreme Court he hadn’t authorized a cert petition filed on his behalf. The lawyer who filed the petition told the court the Defender Association of Philadelphia had asked him to file the petition, and he had good reason to believe the inmate had authorized it.
