Suit Seeks Early Counsel for Defendants

Md. High Court to Weigh Representation at Initial Hearings

Myron Singleton wanted a lawyer. He was charged with misdemeanor marijuana possession and was appearing before a district court commissioner who would set his bail. Singleton couldn't afford an attorney, and he asked that one be appointed by the state.

The hearing in a Baltimore jail went forward without a lawyer for the defendant, just as it would have for almost any other defendant arrested in Maryland, and Singleton was ordered held on $10,000 bail.

Today, the state's highest court takes up the question of whether the right to counsel extends to these brief initial appearances. The answer could have considerable fiscal implications for the state.

Anyone who has watched a few episodes of "Law & Order" might assume that defense lawyers are at their clients' side from the outset of a case. But that is hardly ever true, and in Maryland, an indigent defendant who cannot make bail will not see a lawyer for at least a couple of days, sometimes longer.

Indeed, unless a defendant already has a lawyer, and the lawyer can make it to what is often a middle-of-the-night hearing in a county jail, the defendant will go it alone, answering questions that will help determine what, if any, bond is set.

Attorneys for Singleton and 10 others claim that an indigent person brought before a district court commissioner is entitled to be represented at that hearing by an attorney paid for by the state.

The plaintiffs in a class-action suit, Quinton Richmond et al. v. District Court of Maryland et al., cite the Maryland Public Defender Act, which says that representation shall "extend to all stages in the proceedings." They also cite the constitutional rights to counsel and to due process.

"There simply is no legal justification for bail proceedings to constitute the one and only exception to an otherwise absolute right to counsel in Maryland when a loss of liberty is threatened," they write in their brief to the Court of Appeals.

The Maryland attorney general's office, which is representing the state, argues that such hearings are not a critical stage in a criminal prosecution and that defendants are not entitled to attorneys.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund are among several organizations that filed friend-of-the-court briefs backing the challenge to Maryland's practices.

Extending the right to counsel to the commissioner hearings would be costly. In 2007, the state public defender's office, which takes the position that staffing such appearances would be a poor use of resources, estimated that doing so would add $24 million to a budget of $85 million.

"Our job is to help people, and if we thought it were helpful, we would be at the forefront of this," said Pete Rose, general counsel of the Office of the Public Defender.