Maine's top judge says the state is still in a "constitutional crisis" despite significant recent investments in the indigent legal system.
But Chief Justice Valerie Stanfill also told lawmakers on Wednesday that court system is making progress addressing a backlog of cases, although challenges remain.
Speaking to a joint session of the House and Senate during her State of the Judiciary address, Stanfill said that low-income defendants in Maine linger in jail every day because there are no court-appointed attorneys available to represent them. Stanfill also told lawmakers that more than doubling the hourly compensation paid to private attorneys who take on such clients has not solved the problem.
"I hope that adding some public defenders, which is happening, will help," Stanfill said. "But it's going to be a while before we see really robust results from that. And in the meantime, I fear the system really will collapse."
Until recently, Maine was the only state in the nation to rely entirely on private attorneys willing to represent low-income defendants who cannot afford an attorney. But the Maine Commission on Indigent Legal Services, which oversees the program, saw its ranks of attorneys plummet in recent years. And while their numbers have rebounded somewhat, the increase was not nearly as large as many had hoped when lawmakers increased the reimbursement rate from $60 to $150 an hour.
The Commission has hired a small team of public defenders and is asking lawmakers for additional funding to further expand the state's public defender system.
Stanfill, who sits on Maine's Supreme Judicial Court, also told lawmakers Wednesday that the judicial branch has made some progress reducing a severe backlog of cases that worsened during the pandemic.
Last year, the number of pending criminal cases was 60% higher last year than before the pandemic. But Stanfill said that number has dropped to 40-45% thanks to an intensive effort that involved bringing back some retired judges.
"Still a lot, but that's a pretty significant decrease," Stanfill said. "We have been able to chip away at the number of cases pending."
On the other hand, she said, the average length of time that family cases stay on the docket is increasing. But Stanfill said she hopes the recent addition of more district court judges will help address that problem.
Stanfill said the judicial branch will also be asking the Legislature for more General Fund support to pay for the ongoing conversion of Maine's antiquated, paper-based system to an electronic filing system. The rollout of the conversion has taken years longer than anticipated and Stanfill said revenues from fees and fines are not adequate to pay for the continued work on the system.
