With his budget to be cut by an expected $589,000, Maryland Public Defender Stephen E. Harris said that starting next week his office will stop hiring outside lawyers in cases involving multiple defendants.
Meanwhile, Del. Timothy F. Maloney, chairman of a House subcommittee on law enforcement, said yesterday the cuts will result in many criminal convictions being overturned on appeal because of inadequate legal representation.
"This budget cut represents a genuine threat to the public
safety," said Maloney, D-Prince George's.
In a letter to Chief Judge Robert C. Murphy of the Maryland Court of Appeals dated Sept. 23, Harris said the public defender's $29.4 million budget was being slashed by 2 percent. The reduction, he wrote, would prevent him from paying for outside attorneys or transcripts in appellate cases starting Monday.
The public defender hires private attorneys in cases where the state must represent more than one defendant whose legal interests may be in conflict. The office has increasingly made use of outside attorneys, known as panel lawyers, as the number of multiple-defendant drug cases has soared in recent years.
The budget reduction is part of Gov. William Donald Schaefer's plan to deal with a deficit estimated at a staggering $450 million.
The state's deficit-reduction plan, to be unveiled Monday, is expected to include cuts in departments once considered sacrosanct -- health, human resources and correctional services.
State budget officials refused yesterday to provide details of the cut in the public defender's budget. "Everybody's going to have to give up something," said James B. Rowland, spokesman for the Department of Budget and Fiscal Planning.
The amount of the cut could change before next week, Rowland added.
Harris did not return phone calls.
Some members of the state judiciary expressed alarm over the cut in the public defender's budget.
"You have an emergency here . . . a crisis," said Murphy. "The criminal justice system simply must operate. . . . The public defender is a public safety agency."
Judge Joseph H.H. Kaplan, administrative judge of the Baltimore Circuit Court, said the district public defender in Baltimore, Joy L. Phillips, told him of the cut in a meeting this week.
"Their choices were to lay off people or to stop paneling cases and stop producing transcripts," Kaplan said. "Either way, they're devastated."
