By C1 Staff
NEW ORLEANS, La. — Seven indigent inmates were ordered to be released by a New Orleans judge Friday, on the grounds of lack of money to defend them.
According to The Advocate, Judge Arthur Hunter ordered the release, as well as a suspension of the inmate’s prosecutions, ruling that the lack of funds for legal defense violated their Sixth Amendment rights.
After spending over a year in prison, the seven inmates, who face felony charges of murder and rape, spent months incarcerated without legal help on their cases.
In his ruling, Hunter wrote, “We are now faced with a fundamental question, not only in New Orleans but across Louisiana: What kind of criminal justice system do we want? One based on fairness or injustice, equality or prejudice, efficiency or chaos, right or wrong?”
The Advocate reported that the office of Chief Public Defender Derwyn Bunton turned away the cases due to a budget shortage, over-capacity workloads, and the lack of available attorneys.
In response to a persistent issue of public defense funding, Hunter assigned the inmates’ cases to private attorneys.
Pam Metzger, a Tulane Law School professor, is representing all seven men in their bid for release. Metzger argued that “the legislature’s failure to adequately fund public defender’s offices in Louisiana is to blame for an inability to provide the accused criminals with a constitutionally adequate defense.”
Early last week, Metzger called on the court to release all seven inmates “because of the state’s chronic, persistent and catastrophic failure to fund the indigent defense system.”
Assistant District Attorney David Pipes wrote that the inmate’s attorneys are “seeking to bring down a system they disagree with rather than protecting the rights of these individuals this court has appointed them to represent,” and “bent on nothing less than anarchy.”
Pipes plans to appeal the case within 10 days.