Carrasquillo v. Hampden Cnty. Dist. Courts

• Decision Date: 30 March 2020
• Docket Number: SJC-12777
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court
• Parties: Freddie CARRASQUILLO, Jr., & others v. HAMPDEN COUNTY DISTRICT COURTS.

484 Mass. 367

142 N.E.3d 28

Freddie CARRASQUILLO, Jr., & others¹

v.HAMPDEN COUNTY DISTRICT COURTS.

SJC-12777

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk..

Submitted November 7, 2019.

Decided March 30, 2020.

Rebecca A. Jacobstein, Committee for Public Counsel Services (Benjamin H. Keehn, Boston, Committee for Public Counsel Services, also present) for the petitioners.

Matthew R. Segal (Jessica Lewis, Boston, also present) for Hampden County Lawyers for Justice.

Timothy J. Casey, Assistant Attorney General, for the respondents.

Chauncey B. Wood, Boston, for Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, was present but did not argue.

The following submitted briefs for amici curiae:

K. Neil Austin, Stephen Stich, & David Siegel for Boston Bar Association.

Shane T. O'Sullivan, Assistant District Attorney, for District Attorney for the Hampden District.

Donna Patalano & Stephanie Ainbinder, Assistant District Attorneys, for District Attorney for the Suffolk District.

Present: Gants, C.J., Gaziano, Lowy, Budd, Cypher, & Kafker, JJ.

LOWY, J.

The right to counsel is one of the most fundamental principles in our criminal justice system. Individuals who are charged with offenses for which they face imprisonment if convicted are constitutionally entitled to representation by defense counsel at public expense if they cannot afford to retain their own attorney. The government of the Commonwealth therefore has a constitutional obligation to ensure that there is an adequate supply of publicly funded defense attorneys available to represent eligible indigent criminal defendants. See G. L. c. 211D, §§ 2B, 5. In this case, we consider once again how courts should proceed when it appears that the government has failed to meet that obligation.

The petitioners challenge an order dated June 12, 2019 (June 12 order), issued by the First Justice of the Springfield Division of the District Court Department (Springfield District Court), that required the attorney in charge of the Springfield office of the Committee for Public Counsel Services (CPCS) "to provide counsel to Courtroom I in the Springfield District Court every day who shall accept appointments in all cases as ordered by the Court to represent clients at arraignment[s], bail hearings, hearings pursuant to G. L. c. 123, § 35, and any other matter that the Court deems necessary." The First Justice issued this order in response to a shortage of available defense attorneys that left many indigent criminal defendants in the Springfield District Court without counsel.

Indigent criminal defendants in the Springfield District Court and other Hampden County courts are represented either by staff attorneys employed by CPCS in its public defender division (PDD), or by certified private defense attorneys, also known as "bar advocates," provided by Hampden County Lawyers for Justice (HCLJ) under a contract with CPCS. CPCS staff attorneys and HCLJ bar advocates are responsible for covering "duty days" in the Hampden County courts, during which they are assigned to a particular court for the day, represent indigent individuals at arraignment, and ordinarily accept assignment of those individuals' cases. Due to a shortage of available private attorneys, however, it has been increasingly difficult for HCLJ to find enough bar advocates who are willing and able to cover HCLJ's allotted share of duty days in the Springfield District Court's criminal session over the last two years. Consequently, beginning in 2018, CPCS staff attorneys in the Springfield PDD office stepped in to cover more duty days and take substantially more cases in the Springfield District Court than they had taken previously.

Due to the volume of additional cases, the attorney in charge of the Springfield PDD office and CPCS's deputy chief counsel determined in June 2019 that the staff attorneys in the Springfield PDD office had exceeded their caseload capacity and they could not provide effective assistance to any additional clients. Accordingly, on June 11, the attorney in charge informed the First Justice of the Springfield District Court that CPCS staff attorneys in the Springfield PDD office could not handle any more duty days in that court.

In response, the First Justice issued the June 12 order. CPCS then filed an emergency petition in the single justice session of this court (the Supreme Judicial Court of Suffolk County or county court) pursuant to G. L. c. 211, § 3, seeking to vacate the June 12 order, and later moved to vacate the Springfield District Court's subsequent appointments of PDD staff attorneys as defense counsel under the June 12 order.² The single justice reserved and reported the matter for our consideration.

We recognize that the First Justice was taking emergency action that he deemed necessary under the circumstances to protect indigent defendants' constitutional rights to counsel and to avoid halting proceedings in new criminal cases in the Springfield District Court. We conclude, however, that the June 12 order and the court's subsequent appointments of CPCS staff attorneys in the Springfield PDD office under that order were invalid. The June 12 order and subsequent appointments of CPCS staff attorneys improperly infringed upon CPCS's statutory authority to control assignments and to limit caseloads for its staff attorneys under G. L. c. 211D because the order and the appointments overrode CPCS's determination that the staff attorneys in its Springfield office had already reached their caseload capacity and could not accept any more cases, without any contrary findings by the court that put in doubt the validity of that determination. We also note our concern that, to the extent such an order may require CPCS staff attorneys to accept more appointments than they can reasonably handle, it risks interfering with their ethical obligations under the Massachusetts Rules of Professional Conduct to act with reasonable diligence and promptness in representing their clients, and thereby threatens to undermine the very right to counsel that the order seeks to protect.

In Lavallee v. Justices in the Hampden Superior Court, 442 Mass. 228, 246-249, 812 N.E.2d 895 (2004), where we faced a similar problem in Hampden County sixteen years ago, we established a protocol to protect the rights of indigent defendants when a shortage of available attorneys interferes with the prompt appointment of defense counsel to represent those defendants. In the present case, while it would have been preferable for the First Justice or CPCS to take steps to invoke that protocol once the shortage of available defense counsel became apparent, we recognize that that task was nearly impossible because we did not specify how to do so in Lavallee. As such, in this opinion we outline a process through which CPCS, or the regional administrative justice (RAJ) who oversees a court affected by such a shortage, may seek to trigger the Lavallee protocol by filing a petition in the county court pursuant to G. L. c. 211, § 3.

We also discuss other proposals suggested by the parties and amici³ to remedy the shortage of available defense counsel in Hampden County. We note in particular that the parties and most of the amici appear to agree that the statutory hourly rates for bar advocates are too low and should be increased. Although we frame this issue below, we defer to the Legislature's authority, as the governmental branch vested with the power to make laws and appropriate funds, to devise an appropriate solution.

Finally, we call upon all members of the bar to consider stepping forward as a public service to assist in representing indigent defendants, as attorneys have done many times throughout our history.

Background. 1. Appointment of counsel for indigent defendants in criminal proceedings. Appointing counsel to represent indigent defendants in criminal proceedings has deep roots in Massachusetts history. As early as the 1790s, this court began appointing defense counsel for defendants in capital cases tried before it, and in 1820 the Legislature authorized such appointments by statute.⁴ During most of the Nineteenth Century, leading members of the Massachusetts bar accepted these appointments without compensation as a service to the community and the profession.⁵ In 1893 and 1911, however, after the Legislature transferred jurisdiction over capital cases to the Superior Court, it also authorized payment of reasonable compensation and expenses to court-appointed attorneys defending persons indicted for murder who were otherwise unable to procure counsel.⁶

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Supreme Judicial Court took several steps to make appointed defense counsel more broadly available to indigent defendants in noncapital cases, often anticipating later rulings by the United States Supreme Court. In a pair of decisions issued on the same day in 1957, we reversed convictions in two noncapital cases on the ground that the defendants' rights to a fair trial under art. 12 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights had been violated because the defendants were not represented by counsel.⁷ In 1958 -- five years before the Supreme Court extended the right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution to State criminal defendants under the Fourteenth Amendment in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963) -- we promulgated S.J.C. Rule 10, which required assignment of counsel in all noncapital felony cases in the Superior Court unless the defendant waived this right or was able to obtain counsel. See S.J.C. Rule 10, 337 Mass. 813 (1958).⁸ The rule also affirmed "the inherent discretionary power of any court to appoint counsel" in any other case. Id. In 1964, we amended rule 10 to require assignment of counsel in any case where the defendant faced imprisonment, anticipating the standard announced by the Supreme Court in Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U.S. 25, 37, 92 S.Ct. 2006, 32 L.Ed.2d 530 (1972...