Court Rules State Not Liable To Pay For Legal Help For Poor

The Mississippi Supreme Court has ruled that the state is not obligated to help counties pay for hiring lawyers for poor criminal defendants.

The court, in a 6-2 decision Thursday, sided with Circuit Judge Ann Lamar in a 2003 case out of Quitman County.

In her November 2003 decision, Lamar said she would not declare unconstitutional a state law requiring local governments to pay for indigent defense.

Quitman County sued the state in 1999 after it was forced to borrow several hundred thousand dollars in the early 1990s to defend two men convicted of killing members of a local family.

Attorneys argued that having the counties pay for their own indigent defense systems was a violation of the state's constitutional duty.

Lamar said Quitman County never proved their main points: that the county's two part-time public defenders were overburdened and gave their clients poor representation because of a bad system.