As of July 1, indigent inmates must call their attorneys collect if they want to chat about their legal embroilments over the phone.
Ed Sheehy, Missoula's regional deputy public defender, is crying foul.
“We don't have the budget to foot the bill,” Sheehy said last week. “I haven't even seen the July bill, but I'm sure I'm going to see it pretty quick.”
Two years ago, Montana overhauled its system for defending the poor in court, due in part to an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, which challenged Montana and seven of its counties in 2002. At the time, each of the state's 56 counties had a different system for defending people accused of crimes who couldn't afford an attorney. The new system operates uniformly under a statewide umbrella.
“I have a commission telling me that these calls have to be toll-free,” Sheehy said. “One issue that led to the ACLU's lawsuit is that the Missoula County Public Defenders Office would not accept toll-free calls from jail.”
The ACLU agreed to suspend the lawsuit while the Montana Legislature worked to revise the public defender system, and the state took control in July 2006, when the toll-free calls began. The system is now headquartered out of Butte and supervised by a chief public defender who oversees 11 regions, each headed by a regional deputy public defender, like Sheehy.
Sheehy hopes the issue will be resolved at an upcoming meeting between the Office of Public Defenders and the Montana Association of Counties, which would have to agree to place more money in the OPD budget to offset the extra costs from collect phone calls.
Beyond the financial strain, Sheehy worries that his clients' legal representation is being compromised.
Because all phone calls are now collect, when an inmate contacts an attorney who is out of the office, the call will not be accepted, and no message can be left.
But McMeekin said he gave Sheehy more than enough notice before pulling the plug on toll-free calls, and pointed out that Yellowstone County and Cascade County have taken similar steps in moving toward collect calls.
“This certainly was not something that was done in haste or without trying to work with the public defenders' office,” McMeekin said.
In an e-mail dated Nov. 5, 2007, McMeekin explained to Sheehy that “in the last 2.5 months, there have been 4,800 calls to the Office of the Public Defender. Lost revenue on connection fees alone exceeds $10,000, and that does not include the per-minute fees.”
The phone provider to the Missoula County Detention Facility, AGM Telecom, charges a connection fee of $2.60 per call.
In February 2008, jail officials reported that 2,675 calls were made by inmates to the Office of Public Defenders in the previous 30 days; of those, 763 were not completed, meaning the line was busy, the call was not accepted or the phone went unanswered. And of all those calls, McMeekin said, only about 160 were five minutes or longer.
“Hardly time for a meaningful conversation,” he said.
But Sheehy says the Public Defender Commission created its statewide standards to ensure that services are provided “in a manner that is fair and consistent throughout the state,” and adopted an applicable standard of attorney-client communication.
“Each jail or detention facility should make available an unmonitored and unrecorded toll-free telephone for purposes of allowing indigent clients to contact and confer with counsel and public defender staff on at least a daily basis,” reads the Montana Public Defender Act.
It was on the basis of this standard that Sheehy met with McMeekin in June 2006 to ask that there be unmonitored and unrecorded free phone calls from the detention facility to the public defenders' office, a request McMeekin agreed to “as an extended courtesy,” he said.
In an e-mail dated June 30, 2008, the final day of toll-free calls from the jail, Sheehy wrote McMeekin: “While I am aware that a couple of months ago you told me that ‘revenue was being lost' with this practice, I must advise you that the standard I must operate under requires the provision of this service. If the revenue issue is of such a great concern, you can raise this issue with the Montana Public Defender Commission when they meet here in Missoula on July 18, 2008. In the meantime, I would ask that the toll-free calls continue, until the commission directs us otherwise, as this is the only way to provide daily contact under the standard.”
Although McMeekin denied the request for an extension, Standing Master Brenda Desmond signed a Missoula District Court order three days later requiring the jail to provide free phone calls to the Office of Public Defenders.
“To ensure that (defendant) is provided effective assistance of counsel as required by the constitutions of the state of Montana and the United States of America, and good cause appearing, including the fact that free calls were provided to inmates at the Missoula County Detention Facility until three days ago and provided for the last two years before that, the Missoula County Detention Facility is hereby ordered to provide (defendant) with the ability to call his public defender without cost.”
District Judge John Larson later overruled the order, deciding that the issue could best be settled between the Office of Public Defenders and the Missoula County Sheriff's Office.
“We're waiting to see what the Montana Association of Counties decides,” Sheehy said. “If we have to do it this way, if MACO can kick in more money specifically designed for collect calls, that's going to cost Missoula County anyway. That's where we're at.”
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fefe wrote on Dec 26, 2008 2:38 AM: