Maine's public defender commission this week added some flexibility to the qualifications that attorneys must meet in order to take court-appointed cases, as the state sees a growing number of low income defendants jailed without representation.
Jim Billings, the commission's executive director, said part of the rule change allows more kinds of legal work to count in assessing an attorney's ability to take specialized cases, including homicides.
"We want to be a little bit more flexible," he said. "Qualifying people for specialized case types in that kind of an environment."
The commission also granted Billings more room in approving waivers for attorneys who don't meet the exact technical requirements, but still demonstrate the ability to handle court-appointed work.
Billings emphasized that all prospective attorneys will still be thoroughly vetted.
"It's not going to be a complete abandonment of the standards," Billings said. "It's going to be a slight additional amount of flexibility so that if someone didn't meet the technical letter of the previous rule, but we felt they had demonstrated the capacity to do those cases, we'd be able to grant the waiver."
The system is scrambling to respond to a decline in participating attorneys, and a backlog of cases.
The changes were adopted as an emergency rule, meaning they will be in effect for 90 days.
After that period, Billings said the commission will evaluate the impact, and decide which aspects, if any, to adopt permanently.
