The ronda and the rope: Parallel justice systems and the dangers of legal abandonment in rural Latin America

Peruvian President Ollanta Humala delivers a speech in rural Puno.
© Presidency of Peru, 2015 

Much has been written about the lack of access to legal services and the reduced capacity of state and legal actors in rural areas of the United States of America. Savvy writers usually stay clear of making worst-case-scenario predictions. This is understandable, as nobody wants to be the person who says the sky will fall. I shall not make such calamitous predictions either. What this article contains is instead a view into a place in which legal systems have failed and given way to other forms of "justice."

This article is a small survey of parallel systems of justice in rural and remote areas of Peru, a country with which I am intimately familiar. Over the course of this post I will go through the circumstances that led to the formation of such systems, their current status, and some of their worst excesses. Peru is not the United States. Its geography, history, and demographics are radically different. The underlying conditions that produced these parallel systems are not, however, unique to Peru. It is worth asking what fills a vacuum when the courts do not play a role. Some particular responses have emerged in Peru. Whether such responses might ever emerge in rural America is for the reader to imagine.

The geographical roots of legal absence

A lone truck challenges the curves of the Pasamayo Serpentine.
© Santiago Stucchi, 2008.

Peru's geography represents a major obstacle to the nation's political integration and by extension, to its legal system. Peru is vertically split in half by the Andes Mountain. The Andes are flanked on the east by the Amazon rainforest and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. Peru's capital, Lima, is home to one-third of the nation's population. This results in an extremely centralized nation, dominated by its political and economic coastal elites. Its mountainous terrain makes transportation quite difficult as well, with some highways like the infamous Serpentine of Pasamayo--an extremely narrow 14-mile stretch of highway which has mountain on one side and abyss on the other--being the only way between different regions of the country.

In many remote areas, especially in the Andes, there is very little formal policing. Courts are a distant, nonoperative institution. Language barriers do not help either, as about 15% of Peru's population speaks Quechua as their main language. But many Peruvians--especially those working in government--do not speak Quechua at all. Historically, communities in such areas have governed themselves with little involvement from the central or even regional government. They often handled disputes through informal assemblies or through respected community leaders. The first rondas campesinas (meaning "peasant patrols") were established in the northern Andean region of Cajamarca in the late 1970s. These early rondas were primarily created to deal with property crimes, the main one being cattle theft.

Sendero Luminoso and the militarization of the rondas

A painting displayed on the First Military School of Sendero Luminoso.
On the left, the students. On the right, Sendero's leader, Abimael Guzman. Above him the figures of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong.

In May 1980, the Maoist terrorist group Sendero Luminoso (literally "Shining Path"), a primarily rural Andean movement, declared war on the Peruvian government. It was led by Abimael Guzman, a professor of philosophy at a university in Ayacucho (a region in the southern Andes). Part of Sendero's strategy was what they called "batir el campo" (meaning "scouring the countryside," destroying all non-Sendero authority in such regions). Initially, many rural communities sided with Sendero, agreeing with their message of discontent against the ways in which the government had neglected the people of the Andes.

When confronted with the violent revolts happening in the Andes, President Fernando Belaunde dismissed them, assessing the threat as nothing more than small issues with cattle rustlers. Sendero held "people's trials" against those it considered "antirevolutionary elements." The subjects of these trials were often community leaders, and the price of resistance was massacre. The most notorious of these was the Lucanamarca massacre of 1983, in which over 60 people (ranging from ages of 6 months to 70 years of age) were killed with machetes and axes, in retaliation for the killing of one of Sendero's commanders. What followed were years of massacres in the Andes, with most of the human cost falling on the rural communities who lived there.

Eventually, in the early 1990s, the Peruvian government found its footing in the fight against Sendero, and the war started to turn. Under the leadership of President Alberto Fujimori, the rondas started being armed and supported by the government. This cooperation proved instrumental to defeating Sendero in rural regions and displacing them into other areas where the government had an easier time fighting them. On September 12, 1992, Sendero's leader Abimael Guzman was captured in a safehouse in an upper-class neighborhood in Lima, where he was being hosted by a wealthy classical dancer. That was game over.

Constitutional recognition

Guzman's capture was an inflection point from which Fujimori moved forward with a series of reforms. Chief among them was the Peruvian Constitution of 1993. In its Article 149, the constitution recognizes the authority of the rondas campesinas within their jurisdictions, as long as they "respect the fundamental rights of people." The same article calls for the cooperation of the "traditional" judicial power and these parallel systems of justice going forward.

How the project of cooperation and respect for the fundamental rights of people is going is difficult to assess with precision. But, where statistics are scarce, it is always good to tell a story.

A Canadian in Ucayali

The village of Nuevo Jerusalen in the Ucayali Region of Peru.
© Vratislav S, 2012

Imagine you are a young (ish) Canadian man. Like many of your peers, you seek enlightenment. You doubt Western medicine and respect indigenous cultures. So, you decide to look into the real stuff. You travel south, to Peru, perhaps farther south, to the Ucayali Region of the Amazon rainforest. You do ayahuasca. It changes your life, so you seek to go further down the rabbit hole. You seek a teacher, Olivia Arevalo Lomas, a well-known elder, healer and community leader. You dedicate ten years of your life to this. Then one day, a bang, and your teacher is dead, three gunshot wounds.

The police eventually show up (it takes them some time), and everyone is really angry. Even worse, they think it is your fault. Oh no. Facebook posts start to be circulated. "WANTED" they say, then a picture of you, then a plea for clues on your whereabouts. People in the comments express their wishes that you are brought to justice; others propose rewards for hunting you down. Things are looking really bad for you.

But actually, these latest developments are not that bad, since you are already dead. Police soon find a phone which contains a video recording of your last moments. A mob got to you, quickly, well before the police ever got there, since you are conspicuously foreign. There was no trial, no evidence, no attorneys. You have been lynched, and your manner of death was strangulation.

Your family says you were really nice, hated guns, and just loved ayahuasca. The locals will remain convinced it was you who killed Arevalo Lomas. The rest of the world will never know. This story is not a thought experiment. This happened to Sebastian Woodruffe, a Canadian tourist. His death drew international attention in 2018 before disappearing from the news cycle within days.

Gerardo's choice

If you are in any way like me, you may have heard the story and said to yourself, "only one way to avoid a similar fate, stay as far away as possible from that region if you are not a local."

This is not, however, a solution. In 2007, in the village of Patascachi (near the border with Bolivia, population around 1000), a mob descended upon the house of Gerardo Parisuana, a farmer. Nearly the entire town was there. The occasion? Gerardo's son Gary was accused of being a cattle rustler, and the mob had had enough of him. The evidence against him? A gang of cattle rustlers, upon capture, had accused Gary of being their leader. The police arrested Gary, but found insufficient evidence to hold him and soon released him. For the rondas, however, the "trial" had already happened. The verdict was in. There was no room for appeals. Gerardo now had a choice: to lynch his own son, or to have the rest of his family share his son's fate. Gerardo made his choice. According to witnesses, the crowd tortured Gary before Gerardo hanged him.

The mayor on trial

A sign near the city of Ilave, in the Puno Region.
© TeshTesh, 2015

Not even money and power are enough to protect one from such a fate. In 2004, in the city of Ilave (elevation 12,000 feet, in the Puno Region, near Lake Titicaca in the heart of the Andes), the mayor of the city, Cirilo Robles, was lynched by a mob. It all started with a protest sparked by allegations of corruption and embezzlement. Aymara-speaking peasants made camp in front of the municipality's doors, protesting that the mayor had promised to pave the Ilave-Mazocruz highway, a promise yet to be fulfilled. The mayor left the city as soon as the protests started, returning only weeks later. When he finally came back, he held a meeting with his council at his private residence, in which he resolved to resign.

The mob found out about the mayor's return, and they soon descended upon his home. They breached the house and dragged the mayor out after giving him a beating. He was tortured for hours before being hanged in the city's square. His lifeless body was found under a bridge. Later that year, Peru's Government Accountability Office investigated the allegations against him. They found no evidence of embezzlement and exonerated him. The Supreme Court of Peru sentenced two members of the mob to 30 years in prison. Mayor Robles' successor, Miguel Flores, closed this somber chapter with a comment that could be considered the most Peruvian aphorism, "Everything remains the same for us."

Conclusion

The rondas campesinas are not just a series of horror stories. They emerged from genuine necessity and fulfilled a role that nothing else could. They even have constitutional recognition. But the results they tend to generate speak for themselves. Formal policing and legal institutions are not perfect, but they tend to produce less shocking and violent results. 

Peru is not the United States. The Andes are not Appalachia. The Amazon is not the Ozarks. But legal vacuums do not know borders, and the dynamics that fill them may follow recognizable patterns. Whether those patterns may ever extend to the United States is, as said in the introduction, for the reader to imagine.

Truancy laws: Bad for rural students and their schools

Coleville, CA (Mono County)

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

All states have passed compulsory attendance laws requiring that students in a certain age range attend school. Exceptions vary by state. Sadly, in spite of these laws, nearly one in four students are chronically absent.

Students and their parents can face penalties for truancy. Some states take a punitive approach to truancy, allowing referrals to juvenile court for truant students and imposition of criminal charges on parents. The latter can result in hefty fines and even jail time. 

For example, a 2024 Kentucky law required that a school refer a student to the County Attorney for "formal court action" if a student accumulates 15 or more unexcused absences. Until Governor Newsom repealed the policy in October of 2025, California's truancy laws allowed parents to be fined up to $2,000 or sentenced to up to a year in jail if their child was chronically truant (missed 10% of the school year). In 2017, ten Merced County parents were charged with a misdemeanor for their children's absences. 

Despite a recent shift away from punitive truancy policies, 20 states still require schools to alert courts if a student is truant.

Greenville, CA (Plumas County)

(c) Lisa R. Pruitt 2012

Rural communities are especially susceptible to truancy. The National Rural Education Association found that "[n]early one in seven rural students experiences poverty, one in 15 lacks health insurance, and one in 10 has changed residence in the previous 12 months." Students in schools with greater populations of students in poverty are three times as likely to be chronically absent. Additionally, the spatial isolation of rural areas means that rural students typically travel farther to get to school and may have a more difficult time accessing transportation. The transportation issue, along with limited funding, also means that rural schools have less access to extracurriculars.  leading to students being less engaged in their school community. The lack of opportunities is not a new problem; this blog post from 2014 discusses the struggles related to student involvement in rural schools.

Truancy laws are ineffective

Truancy laws are ineffective at decreasing school absence because they do not address the underlying reasons why students are absent in the first place. 

For example, in a New York Times Magazine story on homelessness in rural areas, author Samantha Shapiro explained a crucial paradox: 

Students who do not have a stable place to live are unable to attend school regularly, and failing to graduate from high school is the single greatest risk factor for future homelessness.

This is just one example of how truancy laws fail to address the problem and instead act punitively. As expressed by California Assembly Member Patrick Ahrens, the sponsor of California's bill repealing criminal fines and jail times, "[f]ining or imprisoning parents did nothing to get kids the education and support they need."

The truancy problem is compounded by rural school funding issues in states where school funding is directly tied to attendance. Six states use average daily attendance (ADA) to determine a student count for funding allocations; they are California, Texas, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Missouri. Linking ADA to funding means districts with higher rates of chronic absences are hurt financially. This makes it even more difficult for those schools to address truancy issues. 

Better solutions to chronic absences

While punitive policies are ineffective, other interventions have proved helpful. One study found that truancy decreased by 5% when schools sent simple, periodic, personalized messages to parents about their child's attendance. These messages used templates that automatically pulled information about a student, including their name, details of absences, and goals for decreasing absences. These notices are  easily sent to parents to keep them better informed. 

Data systems, such as Iowa's (uses a system that provides near real-time absence data to schools), that catch absentee patterns early and allow schools to intervene earlier are more effective. Prevention –not punishment– should be the focus of school policies to decrease truancy.

Zoom court: Problems and solutions

A meeting celebrating Wikipedia's 20th birthday, conducted on Zoom due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Today you can do almost anything remotely. Want to tie the knot with that special someone in your life? You can do it through Zoom. Want to earn your degree? You can do that remotely now, even a law degree. Have you met your ultimate demise, and your relatives are saying goodbye one last time? Zoom has got you covered there, too.

Despite how much of our world has moved to myriad uses of optic fibers running underground, it seems like the legal system has been particularly resistant to opportunities associated with this new reality, with the new possibilities it represents. This especially impacts rural communities, which often find themselves unable to hire and keep enough public defenders and prosecutors willing to live nearby to keep the criminal justice system running.

Background

Before getting to how the legal profession can step with both feet into the digital age, let’s zoom out a bit. Before the days of Zoom—and even before the days of the now defunct Skype—courts around the country toyed with the idea of remote assistance by counsel. Some efforts date to the 1990s. Back then, the technology was clearly nowhere near where it needed to be for it to be a reasonable alternative to in person attorney appearances. Most efforts were thus limited and they ended in the early 2000s.

Despite improvements in technology in the 2000s and 2010s, it was not until the 2020s that the idea of remote appearances by counsel made a comeback. When that happened, it wasn’t just a product of technological innovation, it was also a product of necessity. In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic shook the entire world, and our criminal justice system along with it. States around the country scrambled to find ways in which essential processes of life that required close quarters contact between people could be performed at a time in which we thought such contact could prove lethal.

And so, the legal system went remote in the way that prisons, schools, funeral homes, churches and most other institutions of American life did so. That is to say, hastily and inadequately. In her 2025 article, We Need to Talk: Modernizing Attorney-Client Jail Communications, Texas A&M School of Law Professor Cynthia Alkon reports the results of a nationwide survey of lawyers she conducted shortly after the start of the pandemic. Many of the respondents were criminal defense attorneys.

A bus somewhere in Bodega Bay, a village in Sonoma County, CA. Reaching Sonoma County's Superior Court from this starting point would probably take multiple buses and hours of time.

Some problems

The overwhelming majority of the attorneys responding to Alkon's survey reported concerns about the confidentiality of their remote meetings with their clients. This was not an abstract, unsubstantiated fear. Some of the article respondents reported incidents of guards and prosecutors listening in on their remote communications, of inmates not being in private rooms during their remote communications with their attorneys, and of deputies recording the calls and forwarding them to the police and to prosecutors.

Confidentiality, however, was not the only issue. Respondents of Professor Alkon’s survey also noted the difficulty of building rapport with clients when discussing private and sensitive subjects when they were not face to face. It was not only lawyers and clients who were having trouble connecting due to remote interactions, but also defendants and judges. In its 2020 report, The Impact of Video Proceedings on Fairness and Access to Justice in Court, the Brennan Center cites a 2010 study which found that defendants whose hearings were conducted over video had substantially higher bond amounts set than those who appeared in person (with the increases ranging from 50% to 90%).

Having all parties physically present in the courtroom also reinforces the gravity and seriousness of the proceedings. In the years since the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been multiple reports of criminal defendants being punished for not understanding the seriousness of their situation. For example, a St. Joseph County, Michigan, man found himself in trouble with Judge Jeffrey Middleton when he logged into virtual court with a colossally inappropriate username. The man was called "an idiot" by the judge, and was placed in a Zoom breakout room as a punishment). In another tragic episode of Zoom court, a man from Washtenaw County, Michigan, found himself in hot water with Judge Cedric J. Simpson when he logged into virtual court from behind the wheel of a moving vehicle to answer to charges of driving with a suspended license (in an astonishing turn of events, the judge realized the man had never had a license, an ordered him to walk himself to the county jail). In perhaps the most extreme case, a Sacramento, California, surgeon logged into virtual court while operating on a patient. These are but a few examples of how the informality of remote platforms caused defendants to behave in ways that did not rise to the seriousness of their situation. Skeptics of remote court appearances and client counseling could certainly argue that defendants may not assist their attorneys with their own defense as effectively when the attorney is just a small picture in a computer.

Another issue that may affect outcomes for criminal defendants who are assisted by an attorney who is working remotely is that of the subtle communications that happened between client and attorney during court appearances. In an episode of the Center for Justice Innovation’s podcast In Practice, the hosts noted that public defenders who joined one of their virtual panels expressed concern about their ability to communicate with their clients through video conferencing. The panelists noted that public defenders often exchange quick whispers and other communications with defendants. The inability to do so can severely undermine outcomes for defendants.

Alpine County's Courthouse in Markleeville, CA.
As of late 2024, all proceedings were being conducted via Zoom.
© Lisa R. Pruitt 2024

Some solutions

The issue of confidentiality, while the most serious, may also be the most straightforward to solve—at least theoretically. In her article, Professor Alkon suggests that:

prosecutors’ offices should clearly, as a matter of policy, prohibit anyone in their offices from using information gathered through recordings of privileged attorney-client conversations.

In practice, these prohibitions must be enforced. How might that be achieved? They should be enforced exactly as they are enforced when there are intrusions upon face-to-face private communications between attorneys and criminal defendants. Potential remedies include suppressing evidence dervied from such intrusions, disqualification of the involved attorneys, sanctions, suspensions, or even disbarment. Perhaps this seemed difficult to implement while the world was scrambling in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but there is no reason why it should be an insurmountable challenge today.

The challenge of establishing rapport between lawyers and clients is a serious one, and it is one that might not have a simple solution. Perhaps video conferencing technology will eventually improve to the point where it is able to fully capture human presence and feelings, enabling lawyers to build affinity with clients across the state as if they were mere feet from each other. Until then, we might find solace in the fact that uncongenial assistance of counsel is a lot better than no assistance at all. Similarly, I think lawyers and courts can take extra efforts to impress the need on defendants to assist in their own defense.

As for the issue of the small interactions between client and attorney that are crucial to the process, this might be an area where courts can accommodate the needs of an evolving society. This would not be the first time the courts have had to be innovative and accommodating. For example, no one will argue that the need for interpreters in court does not slow down the process, or that it does not require some extra effort from judges and juries. Yet, it is clearly a cost worth bearing. With that in mind, I do not think that having a court appearance that takes a few more minutes due to the need to quickly go into a private breakout room is too high a price. Courts can experiment and find ways to make the process more agile, while always prioritizing the ability of defense lawyers to assist their clients.

Finally, it is perhaps best that defendants appear remotely as little as possible, to eliminate the potential prejudice that is hinted at by the more negative outcomes they face when they do so. At the same time, judges should receive training on the inherent biases that humans have when they hear and see a person through a screen as compared to face-to-face. Technology has progressed quite quickly in the last few decades, and it is normal for people's instincts and intuitions to lag behind such fast-paced development. This is no reason to discard the idea. Perhaps judges and juries today deliver more negative outcomes when parts of the process are conducted remotely. This need not be the case in the future. Part of the solution, as with many other things, may be education.

Conclusion

The potential issues examined in this article are not the only ones that may arise from the practice of remote criminal defense. A further examination may reveal others. However, what I hope this post can impress upon readers is that there is absolutely no reason to give up in the face of these challenges. These are, mostly, technical challenges. America has put a dozen men on the surface of the moon; it must be capable of putting two people in a confidential Zoom breakout room.

Sheriffs, sovereignty, and rural governance

In much of rural America, the sheriff is not simply a law enforcement officer but a political actor with broad policymaking power. Sheriffs, like district attorneys, are elected officials who run for office on local platforms. In almost every jurisdiction, sheriffs operate the county jail. In rural places where courts may be distant and state capacity is limited, the sheriff operates as the face of local governance. In her recent book The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy, Jessica Pishko traces the office of the sheriff from its origins to its contemporary role in American governance. Pishko’s work makes manifest that their power is a product of American legal history.

 The office originated in Anglo-Saxon England, where sheriffs functioned as local agents of the crown, responsible for tax collection. In the United States, however, that model was reshaped during the early nineteenth century. Pishko traces the office to the Jacksonian era, the sheriff became an elected official. This move was framed as a democratic improvement on inherited English institutions. Andrew Jackson and his allies sought to expand popular participation in government by multiplying elected offices, imagining the sheriff as a representative of the yeoman farmer and working-class men rather than an arm of elite authority. That historical choice structures the office today, embedding law enforcement authority within electoral politics and helping explain why sheriffs continue to see themselves not only as enforcers of law, but as truest local interpreters.

Control over the county jail is a central source of the sheriff’s authority. As a 2012 blog post, “Rural politics, patronage and (their links to) prisons” observed, in rural areas, the jail is often one of the largest sources of revenue collection. This reinforces the sheriff's authority and provides strong incentives to expand jail capacity and keep beds filled, especially in rural counties with limited tax bases and alternative sources of public funding. 

Credit: "Summit County Sheriff Ford Taurus Interceptor" by Seluryar is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

The county jail also functions as a central site of policymaking. Tasked with operating county jails, the sheriff makes unilateral decisions about booking, detention, intergovernmental contracts, and immigration enforcement. These decisions take on fiscal significance because the sheriff is not merely enforcing criminal law, but managing an enterprise that directly affects the county’s budget. In his 2021 law review article titled Jails, Sheriffs, and Carceral Policymaking, UCLA Law Professor Aaron Littman argues that sheriffs play a central role in driving jail growth. He shows how electoral and fiscal incentives at the county level create pressures that favor jail growth. Since the late 1980s, capacity has grown faster than the jail population itself. Because sheriffs are the officials who initiate and justify new jail construction, this expansion suggests they are actively pushing growth, rather than just responding to crowding. In this way, jail administration transforms the sheriff into a powerful local political actor whose enforcement choices are inseparable from questions of governance. 

Recognizing sheriffs as political actors helps explain their increased prominence in national politics. Sheriffs typically run for office every four years, often in off-cycle elections that depress turnout and insulate incumbents (some jurisdictions it is two years). Many sheriffs campaign on political platforms. Association with the Republican Party is a recent and increasingly prominent phenomenon. As Pishko explains, crime and immigration have become central issues in national conservative politics, making sheriffs attractive allies. Within firmly conservative rural counties, the sheriff has embraced its political dimension. 

In interviews and reporting, Pishko documents the rise of the so-called “constitutional sheriff” movement. The movement argues that sheriffs have a special duty to uphold the original Constitution, positioning the sheriff as a bulwark against distant state and federal authority. 

The COVID-19 pandemic brought these dynamics to a head. When governors issued mask mandates and business-closure orders, local enforcement frequently fell to sheriffs. Many sheriffs, especially those in rural areas, were reluctant to enforce the orders. Sheriffs deployed the rhetoric of the “constitutional sheriff,” to justify refusing to enforce these orders. Sheriffs framed themselves as originalist interpreters of the Constitution tasked with protecting private property, gun rights, and religious freedom from elite liberal technocrats. The movement drew energy from longstanding rural anti-government traditions, including militia movements and the sovereign-citizen ideology.

The rise of the constitutional sheriff is a symptom of hollowed out state capacity in rural America. Sheriffs may seem local and accountable, but they wield extraordinary power with minimal oversight. In rural America, the sheriff's office is not simply enforcing the law, it is often deciding what the law will be.

CalMatters does deep dive into flat-fee contracts for indigent defense

Anat Rubin reports today for CalMatters, the non-profit news service, under the headline, "The Walmart of Public Defense:  How Justice Gets Sold to the Lowest Bidder in Rural California."  Here's an excerpt: 

For three years, the fate of poor people accused of crimes in San Benito County lay in the hands of attorneys who barely spoke with their clients and seldom filed legal motions on their behalf.

While defendants asked them to contest the prosecution’s evidence, to interview witnesses, to do anything, really, to challenge law enforcement’s narrative of the crime, they ushered almost all of them to plea deals instead, averaging just one jury trial for every 1,500 cases.

The attorneys worked for Fitzgerald, Alvarez and Ciummo, the firm that San Benito paid to provide public defense. According to a 2024 state evaluation, they were not doing a good job. Two of the attorneys had inappropriate relationships with clients, another struggled with addiction.

The situation had deteriorated so dramatically that the San Benito district attorney, Joel Buckingham, found himself worrying about the people his office was trying to send to prison. Their attorneys didn’t contest the evidence Buckingham’s prosecutors presented, no matter how it was obtained. Each year, they filed an average of just 10 motions to suppress evidence based on violations of constitutional rights — including unjustified stops and searches, illegal interrogations, and arrests without probable cause.

“Police officers must make mistakes sometimes,” Buckingham told a researcher conducting the evaluation.

The sheriff, Eric Taylor, was also alarmed. If his deputies were never challenged in court, how would they know when they had crossed a line? What would stop them from doing it again?

In Taylor’s previous job, in Santa Cruz County, the courthouse was often packed with law enforcement officers who had been called to defend their actions.

“If we’re doing our job correctly, then we prevail on those motions,” he told San Benito county supervisors last year. “And if we’ve made a mistake, and we’re doing our job incorrectly, we’re held accountable for that.”

Nearly half of California counties pay private lawyers and firms to represent poor people in criminal cases, and most of them, like San Benito, do it through what’s known as a “flat-fee” contract, meaning they pay a fixed amount, regardless of how many cases the attorneys handle or how much time they spend on each case.

It’s a far cheaper alternative — at least in the short run — to operating a public defender office with government lawyers, and it’s created a second-tier justice system in rural stretches of the state: Seven of the eight counties with the state’s highest jail and prison incarceration rates have flat-fee contracts.

You can read the rest of this deeply reported story here.  Read my own scholarship about rural indigent defense delivery here (Yale Law Journal Forum, about how these issues play out in Washington State) and here (Arizona Law Review, about Arizona).  

On the uneven use of investigators by indigent defense attorneys in rural California

CalMatters last week published this story by Anat Rubin about the relative lack of investigators to assist indigent defense attorneys in some counties, with the greatest deficits in nonmetro counties.  The story that illustrates the problem comes out of Siskiyou County, a nonmetro county on the state line. This paragraph explains why investigators matter: 

Defense investigators interview witnesses, visit crime scenes, review police reports and retrieve video surveillance footage that might prove the defendant was on the other side of town when a crime was committed, or that an assault was an act of self-defense. They do work that most lawyers are not trained to do. Without them, police and prosecutorial misconduct — among the most common causes of wrongful convictions — remain unchecked, significantly increasing the likelihood that people will go to prison for crimes they did not commit.

And here's an excerpt with details of the situation in California:

The lack of investigators affects counties throughout the state, from poor, rural areas like Siskiyou to the state’s largest and most well-funded public defense offices. Los Angeles employed just 1 investigator for every 10 public defenders — one of the state’s worst ratios, according to the most recent data from the California Department of Justice. Only seven California counties met the widely accepted minimum standard of 1 investigator for every 3 attorneys.

The situation is most alarming in the 25 California counties that don’t have dedicated public defender offices and pay private attorneys to represent indigent people in criminal court. Most of these attorneys receive a flat fee for their services, and the cost of an investigator would eat away at their profits. Some counties allow contracted attorneys to ask the court for additional funds for investigations, but court records show the attorneys rarely make those requests.

In Kings County, which has one of the highest prison incarceration rates in California, contracted attorneys asked the court for permission to hire an investigator in 7% of criminal cases from 2018 to 2022. In Lake County, attorneys made those requests in just 2% of criminal cases over a three-year period; in Mono County, it was less than 1%. To earn a living from meager county contracts, research shows, private attorneys and firms must persuade defendants to accept plea deals as quickly as possible. An investigation is an expensive delay.

And here is a paragraph putting this all in the context of local funding of the indigent defense function.

As the nation caught up [on funding indigent defense], California slipped behind. The state kept its defender system entirely in the hands of its counties. Today, it is one of just two states — alongside Arizona — that don’t contribute any funding to trial-level public defense, according to the Sixth Amendment Center. The state does not monitor or evaluate the counties’ systems. There are no minimum standards, and for many defendants there are no investigations — even in the most serious cases.

I have written extensively in academic journals here and here about this latter issue and its consequences in rural counties.  

The death of flat fees: indigent defense reform

California Assembly Bill 690 seeks to reform the the criminal justice system in the state by banning flat fees and per case compensation contracts for indigent public defense. Under the current flat fee system, the government may contract with a private for-profit attorney or firm and pay them a lump sum in exchange for their representation of indigent defendants. The practice of contracting for a flat fee has been criticized for various shortcomings.

These problems were highlighted in a very recent report published by the Wren Foundation, the ACLU, and the UC Berkley Criminal Law and Justice Center earlier this March. Per the report, the major problem with the flat fee system is that contracted attorneys do not stand to make additional money for putting more time or investing more money into indigent cases. This, in turn, creates an incentive for contracted attorneys to spend as little time possible on these cases.

This problem is compounded by the fact that most counties that utilize the flat fee system do no require contracted attorneys to focus solely on the indigent cases they are assigned. This means these attorneys can take on private clients who are paying normal rates based on the time that their case is being worked on. This provides further incentive for attorneys to spend less time on indigent defense, and prioritize those clients from which they stand to gain the most financially. Add the fact that most contracted attorneys have to pay out of pocket for investigative services in the indigent cases they handle and the fact that contracted attorneys are subject to very little, if any, oversight and you have recipe for some very questionable representation.

The incentives created by the flat fee system undercut the right to zealous and competent representation, which the report backs up with some rather alarming statistical findings. For example, eight of the ten counties with the highest incarceration rates, including all of the top five, currently utilize a flat fee system. Additionally, only four counties required some sort of attorney supervision while only seven required independent county oversight. It is abundantly clear that something needs to be changed, and AB 690 is the solution be offered.

However, some organizations, like the California District Attorney Association, have opposed AB 690. They argue that it threatens to create a two-tiered criminal justice system that will disadvantage public defenders and district attorneys. This view is likely based on the fact that the new system, which would require contracted indigent defense attorneys to be paid in a way that truly accounts for the caseload and resources they need to adequately represent their clients, would be more expensive. This would, presumably, draw funding away from both prosecutorial and defense institutions in places where there is a mixed system. This seems to ring true when one considers the caseload contracted attorneys and public defenders currently have. (More on case caps and other criminal justice reform and its impact on rural areas here.)

This is further complicated by the fact that the 25 counties that do not have institutional public defense services in California are virtually all rural. (More on the issues the rural counties in California are facing with regards to lawyer shortages here.) Rural areas already struggle with with attracting attorneys to provide legal services. (More on legal deserts here.) Additionally, because rural counties have less population, they inherently have smaller tax bases. If AB 690 passes, it means a larger portion of budgets will need to be allocated to providing indigent defense while other aspects of the budget will have to be cut back. 

To be sure, the findings of the Wren Foundation are alarming and indigent defendants should be afforded adequate representation. However, it appears that the new law is aiming to address the current problem with a solution that doesn't have adequate infrastructure to support it, especially when considering how it will likely disproportionately impact rural counties. This affords another opportunity to step back and consider whether these issues are being addressed with the unique issues rural places face in mind. Just because you can dictate a solution on paper does not mean its workable or affordable for the impacted communities in practice. 

US DOJ announces Access to Justice Prize to close "Rural Justice Gap"

This is from the Department of Justice press release.  

The Justice Department’s Office for Access to Justice today announced the launch of the Access to Justice Prize, a year-long prize competition that aims to foster innovative solutions to address critical gaps in access to justice across the United States. The inaugural competition will focus on access to justice gaps faced by rural communities across the country, aiming to advance general public awareness about rural access to justice gaps; prompt and support the development of new and innovative solutions; and promote the replication and expansion of strategies that work.

“Through our engagement with courts, justice practitioners, legal aid providers, academic institutions and other organizations across the country, we’ve heard loud and clear that solutions to close the rural justice gap must begin with rural communities themselves,” said Director Rachel Rossi of the Justice Department’s Office for Access to Justice. “Through the Access to Justice Prize competition, we further this approach, empowering those who best know the barriers their communities face to drive the effective solutions that will ensure access to justice for all, regardless of geography.”

Nationwide access to justice barriers are often exacerbated for rural Americans, especially when unique circumstances like long travel times, limited internet access or lack of attorneys are too often overlooked. A 2022 study by the Legal Services Corporation revealed that 77% of low-income rural households experienced at least one civil legal problem in the previous year, with 94% receiving inadequate or no legal help. Additionally, rural criminal justice systems are strained by part-time judges, contract defense counsel and lacking prosecutorial resources. Studies demonstrate that recruitment and retention challenges are increasing for criminal justice careers in rural areas, including for public defenders, prosecutors and law enforcement. And rural courts face rising caseloads, delay, uneven workloads among judges and lack of resources.

The 2025 Access to Justice Prize aims to inspire and support innovative ideas that address these challenges by engaging those closest to the issues — rural courts, practitioners and organizations. Eligible participants are encouraged to submit proposals for any solutions that expand access to justice, including, for example, solutions to:

• Expanding access to legal representation, legal assistance, or legal information 
• Utilizing alternatives to counsel or other innovative legal assistance models

Breaking down barriers to accessing legal systems, including barriers disproportionately faced by rural Americans, like lack of proximity to a courthouse, ability to travel or access to broadband

Simplifying legal processes, systems, forms, or language

Reducing disparities among those navigating, or impacted by, legal systems

Reducing the need for interaction with civil and criminal legal systems or developing efficient alternatives to justice processes

Reducing any harmful effects of legal systems

Accessing and utilizing technology to expedite and promote efficiency within courts and legal systems

Advancing cost-saving strategies

Expanding language access, utilizing written, spoken, and sign languages, as well as auxiliary communication aids and services

Expanding access for people with disabilities

Expanding access for specific rural populations, such as Tribal communities, low-income communities, communities of color, or other historically underserved communities

Identifying and establishing innovative cross-sector, cross-agency, or otherwise unique partnerships to expand access to legal systems

Reducing financial or economic barriers to accessing legal systems or economic conditions imposed on those impacted by legal systems

Improving legal or other supports for victims and/or survivors

Expanding access to legal systems by taking court/legal processes or assistance to communities, outside of the courtroom

Expanding access to basic and collateral needs for those in rural communities who interact with legal systems, including, for example, housing, food, employment, etc.

Promoting efficiency of systems or processes through customer or user experience strategies

More information and additional examples can be found here. 

The competition will run on a one-year cycle, starting in January 2025, and will feature two judging phases:Finalist Selection: Up to five finalists will receive $5,000 each and then refine their proposals over a six-month phase in preparation to compete for the grand prize.

Grand Prize Selection: Finalists will present their solutions at an Access to Justice Showcase, where judges will select the grand prize winner to receive $50,000.

Below is the timeline for the year-long Access to Justice Prize competition cycle:

• Jan. 7: Submissions open
• March 31: Submission deadline
• April 30: Finalists announced
• May 1 – Oct. 31: Refinement Phase
• Early December 2025: Grand Prize Showcase and winner announcement.  

Kentucky sheriff shoots, kills judge in rural courthouse

 Here's an excerpt from the New York Times coverage of these sensational events: 

The sheriff of a rural eastern Kentucky county walked into a courthouse on Thursday afternoon and shot and killed a district judge in his chambers after an argument, the police said.

Mickey Stines, 43, the sheriff in Letcher County, turned himself in after shooting Judge Kevin Mullins and was charged with first-degree murder, Trooper Matt Gayheart of the Kentucky State Police said at a news conference on Thursday evening.

The shooting happened at about 2:55 p.m. inside the Letcher County Courthouse in Whitesburg, a city in southeastern Kentucky.

The sheriff was taken to a local jail and had been cooperative with investigators, Trooper Gayheart said.

“This community is small in nature, and we’re all shook,” the trooper said.

* * *

The news stunned the residents of Letcher County, which is about 110 miles southeast of Lexington and is home to about 21,500 people.

Whitesburg, incidentally, is home to the Center for Rural Affairs, which publishes the Daily Yonder.  It suffered severe flooding in 2022.  

Rural legal scholarship: Just a place or a just place? Domestic violence, urban-rural differences, and access to justice

Cassie Chambers Armstrong has posted this piece to ssrn.com.  It is forthcoming in the Kentucky Law Journal.  The abstract follows:

This Article examines rural court systems to understand how they are serving survivors of domestic violence. It does so by gathering quantitative data about civil protective order proceedings from over one hundred courtrooms across more than seventy-five counties. Specifically, it examines the rate of legal representation, provision of non-court resources and information, the structures of a given court system (open or closed docket, virtual or in-person attendance, dedicated family court or not), and patterns of judicial discretion. For each variable, this Study asks: Are outcomes different in a rural community? The answer is, resoundingly, yes. Domestic violence survivors navigating rural court systems are less likely to be represented by counsel, and courts are less likely to provide them with information about supportive resources. They are less likely to have access to a dedicated family court judge and unlikely to have a judge enter ancillary orders to address issues of child custody or child support. They are less likely to have meaningful access to virtual court options and more likely to have a court hear their petition in open court instead of a closed proceeding. These findings, and others, suggest rural survivors face unique challenges in obtaining civil protective orders compared to their urban counterparts. Additionally, these data show that all survivors-whether in urban or rural areas-face barriers navigating court systems. Collectively, these results call for place based study and policy interventions to ensure that all survivors can seek meaningful justice in the courts.

Nevada Bar takes up matter of legal deserts

The Nevada Lawyer Magazine took up the issue of legal deserts in its June 2024 issue, including a story by Katherine Stocks titled, "The Far-Reaching Consequences of Nevada's Legal Deserts."  She offers a novel and sophisticated means of determining when a place is vulnerable to becoming a legal desert.  That calculation takes into account the age of existing lawyers (or, more precisely, how long they have been practicing) as well as how many are judges, prosecuting attorneys or public defenders, all roles that limit their ability to represent clients.  The study found that southern Clark County (where Las Vegas is located) and Elko County, in north central Nevada, are the places most at risk in terms of legal deserts. The study helpfully differentiates within counties.  So, for example, while parts of both Clark and Elko counties have plenty of lawyers, other regions of the counties, which cover large territories, do not.   

Another story in the June issue addresses what the University of Nevada Las Vegas Law School is doing to address the state's rural lawyer shortage.  Currently, for example, there is a rural summer externship program that is a collaboration of the UNLV Law School and Nevada's Department of Indigent Defense Services (DIDS).  

A novel approach to (literally) meeting criminal justice system-involved individuals where they are

NPR reported last week from Aneth, Utah, in the state's southeast corner.  That's part of the Dine (Navajo) nation, and the story features a novel program for easing the burden of criminal justice-system involved individuals' engagement with the federal court based hours away in Salt Lake City.  The headline is "Utah, hoping for tangible results on recidivism, is looking for possible solutions."  

Tilda Wilson reports on the work of U.S Magistrate Judge, Dustin Pead and federal parole officer who are going to where the system-involved individuals are, rather than expecting the individuals to come to them, hours away in other corners of the state:  

Aneth, Utah, is a tiny town on the Navajo Nation, surrounded by a beautiful landscape of red rocks and desert. On a chilly winter morning, it was just starting to rain at the Aneth Chapter House, a sort of reservation town hall. Today, U.S. magistrate Judge Dustin Pead is holding court here.

DUSTIN PEAD: The district is quite large. We don't have a probation officer located in the area.

WILSON: Pead drove six hours to be here, about 350 miles from the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City. He comes down once a month to check in on people under court supervision. In Salt Lake, there's a lot more drug and mental health treatment available to help people when they get out of prison. Out here, those things are hard to come by. Pead says it makes sense that it's so much more difficult to get out of bad patterns of crime. So nine years ago, Pead started bringing court to the reservation, traveling with probation officers, a prosecutor and a public defender. It's called Tribal Community Reentry Court.

PEAD: It would be the first reentry court that we had heard of that would actually travel to people instead of having people travel to the court.

WILSON: Pead, the lawyers and probation officers are able to spend face-to-face time building rapport with each supervisee and their loved ones.

PEAD: I want them to have trust that we want them to grow. I'm not waiting to catch them in a violation. So for me, that's frequently calling them by their first name, giving accolades, knowing them, knowing their family, communicating with their family during court.

WILSON: It's working. The federal court says the recidivism rate has dropped to just 6% for people who participate in the Tribal Reentry Court. Cordell Wilson is a parole officer who has been working on the Navajo Nation since 2002. He's based 5 1/2 hours away in St. George. He used to only be able to visit people on the Navajo Nation every three months or so when something went wrong. Now visiting monthly, Wilson says he's able to build trust with the people he works with. He says it works a lot better.

Humboldt County, California judge under fire for ethics violations as election looms

The headline from The Press Democrat (of Sonoma County, California but covering the north coast up through Humboldt), is "Humboldt County Judge Greg Kreis accused of sexual harassment, drunken bullying, throwing curveball into his reelection bid." Here's an excerpt from the deeply reported story by Andrew Graham and Marisa Endicott: 

The commission that oversees California’s judiciary has served presiding Humboldt County Superior Court Judge Gregory Kreis a 35-page notice charging him with 19 ethical violations including drunken bullying of attorneys, lewd behavior toward women, poor courtroom behavior, cronyism and abuse of power.

The allegations outlined by the commission on Feb. 2 stretch back years and have thrown his reelection campaign into turmoil just weeks before the March 5 election.

In one case, in May 2019, he is accused of using an antisemitic slur against a deputy public defender, insulting his manliness and then pushing him fully clothed off a pontoon boat into Lake Shasta.

A 2015 allegation from before he became a judge states that he took two attorneys with him to buy cocaine, then used the drug in the car as he drove back from the purchase.

Another accusation alleges he sneaked into a sleeping woman’s bedroom, exposed his genitals and tried to wake her.

Here are more posts about Humboldt County, which is metropolitan, but sparsely populated.  I'm just thinking about the presumably helpful role of this state commission in providing oversight of a sensitive matter like this one.  It seems far preferable to local oversight--and, to my mind, is even preferable to letting the voters decide in a couple of weeks. 

The politics of guns in Maine, before and after a mass murder

New York Times screenshot from Oct. 27, 2023

Maine has been very much in the headlines for nearly a week, prompted by the nation's worst mass murder of 2023.  It began at about 7 pm Eastern time on Wednesday night, October 25, when Robert Card, 40, entered a bowling alley in Lewiston (population 37,000) with a semi-automatic weapon and began shooting.  Less than half an hour later, Card entered a bar and grill and used his weapon to kill and wound many others.   

Lewiston, with a population of 37,000, is the state's second largest city (after Portland), and it sits across the river from Auburn, population 24,000, and the county seat of Androscoggin County.  Based on the size of the population cluster, the area hardly sounds rural, but rural is a descriptor that's often been used in coverage of these events.  More often still, I have heard the word "forested" used, which is perhaps more salient with regard to the hunting theme, which I'll unpack below. 

I didn't know much about Maine's gun laws when this disaster began to unfold in the media, but we were soon to learn more.  In short, Maine's gun laws are quite lax, in part because of the state's culture, which values self-reliance and enjoys hunting, two things that happen to be related, to at least some degree.  

In the days since the mass murder, hunting has been very much a part of the story of how officials have responded to this tragedy.   For example, even after the shelter-in-place order was lifted on Friday, hunting was prohibited in the towns of Lewiston, Lisbon, Bowdoin, and Monmouth.  As the New York Times reported (see screenshot above), deer-hunting firearms season had been scheduled to begin on Saturday, Oct. 28, 2023, but it was initially postponed after Wednesday night's events--at least in the Lewiston-Auburn area. 

New York Times Screenshot, Oct. 27, 2023
following the discovery of gunman Robert Card's body 

We've also seen plenty of mentions of the state's "gun culture" in coverage of Wednesday night's events.  One New York Times headline was "After Shooting, Maine Senators in Spotlight on Guns," which included this tidbit.   

The carnage in Lewiston came as a shock to Maine, which the F.B.I., in a statistical update on crime Monday, called the safest state in the country. It also has one of the largest percentages of gun ownership.

The story quotes U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine):  

Our state has a long history of responsible gun ownership.

But the most momentous political statement about guns came from Maine's congressman for the state's second district, Jared Golden.  That district is massive, stretching from Lewiston all the way to the Canadian border.  (The state's only other district, the 1st,  includes Portland, just 40 miles south of Lewiston, and points south to Massachusetts). Some would say that Golden, a former Marine, is barely a Democrat.  Certainly, he is a centrist who has straddled a fine line between the two parties--and between rural and urban interests--with his constituents.  That is reflected in these August comments about student loan forgiveness, which he vigorously opposed as in the interests of elites and not in the interests of working-class Mainers who choose not to go to college.  

Well, less than 24 hours after the shooting, Golden, who grew up in Lewiston and attended Bates College there, grabbed the headlines by doing an about-face on his previous position on assault weapons.  As the New York Times reported it, Golden "stunned constituents in his traditionally pro-gun district by "declaring that it was time for him “to take responsibility” for his “failure” to back a ban on assault weapons, “like the one used by the sick perpetrator of this mass killing.”  The full comments, as reported in the (Portland) Press-Herald follow: 

I have opposed efforts to ban deadly weapons of war, like the assault rifle used to carry out this crime. The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure, which is why I now call on the U.S. Congress to ban assault rifles, like the one used by the sick perpetrator of this mass killing in my hometown of Lewiston, Maine.

For the good of my community. I will work with any colleague to get this done in the time that I have left in Congress.

Interestingly, Senator King  acknowledged Congressman Golden's "courage" in shifting his position on assault weapons, but neither he nor Maine's other U.S. Senator, Susan Collins, changed theirs.  In this NPR story, Collins is quoted as suggesting that the state's "yellow flag" law should have caused the shooter's guns to be seized.  We've since learned more about the failure of officials to act adequately on multiple reports that Card was having mental health challenges.

Back to hunting:  It's interesting that a significant aspect of the local news once Card's body was found Friday night was that hunting could resume.  It merited this "public security alert."

Screenshot from New York Times breaking news stream
at 7:55 PM Pacific, Oct. 27, 2023

Cellphones across Lewiston area just dinged with a public safety alert:  "The search is over for Mr. Card.  The caution is over.  Hunting may resume."

Postscript:  On Oct. 31, the New York Times reported under the headline, "After Mass Shooting in Maine, No Clarity on Whether Gun Laws will Change."  Here's a salient excerpt: 

Maine has a strong hunting tradition and high rates of gun ownership. It has also long had one of the lowest murder rates in the country. There were 19 firearm homicides in the state last year — just one more than the number of people who were shot to death in Lewiston in a single day. (Guns were also used in 159 suicides last year, out of 183 total gun deaths in the state.)

Space tames law, dog tames fugitive: Cavalcante captured after two week manhunt

On August 31, convicted killer Danilo Cavalcante escaped from the Chester County Prison, located in West Chester, PA. This past Wednesday, after 2 weeks on the run, Cavalcante was captured in South Coventry Township, nearly 20 miles away from the prison he escaped. While on the run, Cavalcante stole a van, stole a gun, and hid in the deep woods of southeastern Pennsylvania, all while avoiding a massive manhunt involving as many as 500 law enforcement officers. 

As the video of Cavalcante "crab walking" up the walls of the prison went viral, locals were terrified. Cavalcante was a known murderer who stabbed his girlfriend in front of her children. He was clearly dangerous and posed a threat to the community. This threat was amplified when Cavalcante stole a rifle from a local homeowner. 

Hundreds of law enforcement officers from a veritable alphabet soup of agencies combed the area on foot and horseback using dogs, drones, and aircraft with advanced surveillance technologies to look for signs of the fugitive. Meanwhile, Cavalcante hid in woods so thick with foliage that officers reportedly walked past him without realizing it. 

This wasn't Cavalcante's first rodeo. In 2017, he fled the Brazilian town of Figueirópolis, where he was wanted in connection with a murder. After hiding from the authorities and taking refuge among the cattle ranches of the northern savanna, he escaped to the US with a false identity. 

After numerous sightings, days of intense searching, and a near-miss where a local homeowner shot at Cavalcante, a surveillance aircraft with thermal imagining technology found a heat signature. Two tactical teams were deployed to the area. In a dramatic moment fit for the big screen, a police dog named Yoda subdued Cavalcante, holding the killer down while he attempted to grab his stolen rifle. 

Cavalcante sustained a minor bite wound and was arrested with no shots fired.  

The Cavalcante manhunt echoes a similar manhunt in upstate New York where issues of geography complicated search efforts. The New York search was covered on the blog here. 

It also illustrates Professor Lisa Pruitt's argument in her chapter "The Rural Lawscape: Space Tames Law Tames Space" that rural spatiality limits the ability of the state to impose the rule of law on the countryside. In essence, the vast expanse, low population density, and natural landscape resist the law. Space "tames" the law, which seeks to "tame" space. Professor Pruitt's theory of rural spatiality's effect on the law is covered in more detail here. 

Likewise, Ralph A. Weisheit, Ph.D., David N. Falcone, Ph.D., and L. Edward Wells, Ph.D noted in their article "Rural Crime and Rural Policing" that rural isolation negatively impacts rural law enforcement in several ways. Rural police have to patrol significantly larger areas. Sometimes, this means officers patrol alone with no witnesses and the grim knowledge that any backup is miles away. Generally, it means law enforcement will take longer to respond to emergencies and are forced to contend with the natural barriers presented by geography and wilderness. 

Simply put, rural isolation spreads the law thin. 

While Cavalcante was able to use the space inherent to rurality to his advantage, "taming" the law for a time, he was eventually caught thanks to the tireless efforts of law enforcement, the use of advanced technology, and the heroism of man's best friend. 

However, not every rural crime becomes national news. Not every rural crime draws significant resources from the state and federal governments. More often than not, rural police must go about their business without the benefit of drones and expensive surveillance aircraft. The law won this round, but space is far from being down for the count. 

Spatial inequality in Texas indigent defense provision

William Melhado for the Texas Tribune reports under the headline, "In rural counties, Texas law puts low-income defendants at a disadvantage."  The subhead is, "A two-tiered system gives less populated counties more time to provide court-appointed lawyers, requiring creative responses to a long-standing problem."

Here's an excerpt:  

While indigent residents — those who can’t afford an attorney — of counties with more than 250,000 people must be provided with a court-appointed lawyer within one day of requesting counsel, the wait for rural Texans could stretch up to five days.

Lawmakers approved this system 22 years ago, in part to address a long-standing problem — a persistent shortage of lawyers working in rural Texas — by requiring counties to create appointment procedures and establish qualifications for attorneys representing indigent clients.

The law, however, also gave the state’s less populous counties more time to assign a court-appointed attorney, jeopardizing the right to legal representation as guaranteed by the U.S. and Texas constitutions.

“That’s changing the law to make the problem legal. It’s not fixing the problem,” said Pamela Metzger, a law professor and director of the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

For low-income residents of almost 200 rural counties, where few if any lawyers may practice, delays in representation can translate into more time in jail and rushed plea deals — both of which can lead to loss of jobs, housing and child custody.

* * *

The problem has drawn the attention of several Republican lawmakers who recently filed identical House and Senate bills to establish a favorable loan repayment program for lawyers who choose to work in rural parts of the state where relatively lower salaries and few law firms can limit opportunities, particularly for young lawyers struggling with law school debt.

Under House Bill 4487 and Senate Bill 1906, lawyers would receive up to $180,000 to repay student loans if they practice criminal law in a rural area for four years. The goal is to encourage novice legal professionals to build careers, families and community ties in rural Texas.

In addition, some rural counties have banded together to create public defender offices that provide lawyers for indigent residents. Although the offices are providing needed relief, hundreds of rural defense attorneys have retired, died or moved away in recent years, leaving some areas underserved.

* * *

According to research by the Deason Center at SMU, there were 181 different plans for appointing counsel in 2019, each with their own standards of determining when someone meets the financial threshold to receive a court-appointed attorney. Those plans can consider income, assets, financial obligations and more when considering if someone is “not financially able to employ counsel,” which is the state’s definition of indigent.

My work on spatial inequality in indigent defense provision in Arizona is here.