In re Articles of Incorporation of Defender Ass'n of Philadelphia
| Decision Date | 02 July 1973 |
| Parties | In re Amendment to ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION OF the DEFENDER ASSOCIATION OF PHILADELPHIA. Appeal of Bernard L. SEGAL and Louis B. Schwartz, Members of Association. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Bernard L. Segal, I.P.P., Dennis H. Eisman, Louis B Schwartz, I.P.P., Philadelphia, for appellant.
Edward W. Madeira, Jr., Pepper, Hamilton & Scheetz, Vincent J Ziccardi, Defender, Defender Association of Philadelphia Philadelphia, for appellee, Defender Assn. of Philadelphia.
Gilbert M. Cantor, Philadelphia, for amicus curiae, American Civil Liberties Union (Greater Philadelphia Branch).
Gilbert M. Cantor, Philadelphia, for appellee.
Before JONES C.J., and EAGEN, O'BRIEN, ROBERTS, POMEROY, NIX and MANDERINO, JJ.
We are presented by this appeal with the question whether the work of the Defender Association of Philadelphia in affording legal representation to indigent persons accused of crime will be compromised and rendered constitutionally ineffective by reason of the substantial representation of the City of Philadelphia in the management of the Association. Specifically, does a potential 50% Degree of control of the governing board of the Association by the City serve automatically to deprive the indigent client of competent, disinterested counsel.
The Defender Association, a non-profit corporation in existence since 1934, applied to the court below in 1969 for approval of certain amendments to its Articles of Incorporation. The Non-Profit Corporation Law [1] provides that the court of common pleas shall approve amendments to the charter of such corporations if in the court's opinion they are 'lawful, will be beneficial and not injurious to the community.' Objections interposed by appellants and others were heard and considered, whereupon the court of common pleas entered its order approving the amendments. [2] On appeal the Superior Court affirmed, per curiam, without opinion, two judges dissenting. [3] Defender Association of Philadelphia Amendments of Articles of Incorporation, 219 Pa.Super. 309, 279 A.2d 240 (1971). We granted allocatur because of the importance of the question involved, and now affirm. [4]
The facts as found by Judge McDevitt in his adjudication are not disputed. They may be summarized as follows: From the time of its incorporation in 1934 until the mid-nineteen sixties, the Association had been purely private in character, deriving its funds from membership dues and contributions from individuals and charitable organizations such as the Community Chest and the United Fund. Until the revolution in the field of constitutional law relating to criminal procedure which began in the early part of the last decade, the Association could function adequately with the moneys so received. Commencing with the historic decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 83 S.Ct. 792, 9 L.Ed.2d 799 (1963), however, the scope of judicially mandated representation of the poor increased dramatically. [5] The Association therefore sought other sources of funding in order to continue to provide quality defense services to the increasing number of indigents entitled to them. Initially the Association was successful in obtaining significant financial assistance through grants from the Ford Foundation, the National Defender Project of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, the United States Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) and voluntary contributions of the City of Philadelphia. Thus, by 1967, the combined budget for Association operations, including representation of juveniles, had risen to $600,000; of this amount $152,000 came from the City.
In 1968 the still increasing need for legal defense services and the termination of contributions previously received for limited time periods from the Ford Foundation, OEO and the National Defender Project combined to create a financial crisis for the Association. An effort to obtain additional funds from the City was unsuccessful, and the Association was compelled to plan for a reduction of services. Contemporaneously, in November of 1968, a bill was introduced in City Council proposing the creation of a wholly new public defender program unrelated to that of the Association, the chief administrative officer of which would be appointed by the Mayor of the City of Philadelphia. The bill met immediate opposition from the Association and from many other groups in the community who were satisfied that throughout its existence the Association had provided indigent citizens with independent legal defense services of the highest quality. There followed meetings between representatives of the Association and the City to search for a compromise approach which would enable the Association to continue to provide all of the constitutionally required legal defense services in Philadelphia. These negotiations resulted in a contract between the Association and the City, entered into on January 28, 1969.
The contract was approved by a majority (19 to 16) of the Board of Directors of the Association. It provides that the Association shall provide counsel and necessary investigative and other services to indigents in various areas of representation, [6] and that the City shall compensate the Association in amounts to be appropriate by City Council from time to time. [7] The Board of Directors of the Association is to be reduced in number from 50 to 30 members, 10 directors to be chosen by the Mayor of the City of Philadelphia with the approval of City Council, ten to be chosen by the members of the Association, and the remaining ten directors (called 'community directors') to be chosen by agreement among a majority of the City directors and a majority of the Association directors. Under the contract the Board of Directors appoints the Chief Defender and the First Assistant Defender; the Chief Defender appoints such other professional and nonprofessional staff as may be necessary. [8]
As a result of the agreement between the City and the Association, the public defender bill then pending in City Council was not acted upon. It was to effectuate the contractual provisions pertaining to changes in its organizational structure that the Association undertook to amend its Articles of Incorporation, for that purpose seeking the necessary approval of the court of common pleas.
The is no dispute that any plan to provide counsel to persons who need representation in criminal proceedings should be designed to provide counsel who is both competent and independent. 'The plan and the lawyers serving under it should be free from political interference.' A.B.A. Project on Providing Defense Services § 1.4, at 19 (Approved Draft, 1968). The integrity of the relationship between lawyer and client, requiring among other things complete fidelity to the client's interest, should be preserved inviolate. Like any lawyer, a person chosen to represent an accused indigent person may serve but one master--the client. Independence of any plan to provide such services can be assured 'if and only if the system, is properly insulated from pressures, whether they flow from an excess of benevolence or from less noble motivations.' Id. § 1.4, at 20 (Comment). [9] The question presented by the case before us is whether the Association, as it will be reorganized pursuant to the contract with the City, will be able to render defender services which measure up to these standards. We hold that the court of common pleas committed no error of law or abuse of discretion in finding that on this record the question should be answered affirmatively.
In essence, appellants' objections to the amendments are that the appointment of one-third of the Association's directors by the Mayor ('City directors') and the selection by those directors and the 'Association directors' of the final one-third of the Board ('community directors') in effect gives the City 50% Representation and thus potentially effective control of the Association. This is turn, it is said, will adversely affect the independence of Association attorneys and thus create an unconstitutional conflict of interest. It therefore follows, so appellants argue, that the amendments are neither 'lawful, beneficial or non-injurious to the community' as required by statute. The conflict of interest is found in the fact that the Mayor appoints both the Commissioner of Police and the City Solicitor, a prosecuting official, [10] whose interests as law enforcement officers are presumed to be antithetical to those of criminal defendants. We are unable to agree.
We are of course well aware of the line of conflict of interest cases to which appellants refer us and which declare that 'the potentiality that (actual) harm May result, rather than that such harm Did result will require reversal.' Commonwealth ex rel. Whitling v. Russell, 406 Pa. 45, 48, 176 A.2d 641, 643 (1962) (emphasis in original). See also Commonwealth v. Wilson, 429 Pa. 458, 240 A.2d 498 (1968); Commonwealth v. Werner, 217 Pa.Super. 49, 268 A.2d 195 (1970); Commonwealth v. Bostick, 215 Pa.Super. 488, 258 A.2d 872 (1969). These and other similar cases invariably involve direct conflicts that arose in situations in which defense counsel undertook to represent co-defendants with differing interests. [11] In the case before us, however, the potentiality of conflict of interest is not direct, but is attenuated and speculative at best, as examination of the proposed new organizational structure shows.
The Mayor appoints one-third of the members of the Association's Board of Directors. Even should each of these City directors be obliged to follow, for political or other reasons, the...
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